Heresy
by Loki Nishizaki
Summary: Uzumaki Naruto: the final frontier. This is the voyage of two young kunoichi. Their mission: to find and retrieve Uzumaki Naruto. To accomplish their mission, they'll have to enlist the help of Naruto, overcome Naruto, hold out against Naruto and above all, recognize Naruto from a large pile of other identical Naruto. They'll have to find him quickly. Naruto wants Naruto dead.
1. Prologue

_Prologue_

It was as if the smallest, most minute fragments of her body crawled under the burden of absolute terror. The air itself seemed to possess life of its own as it caressed her skin and bit down to the marrow of her bones, hoping to find the slightest scrap of warmth to consume, for it bore a cursed hunger that refused to find satisfaction.

Ravenous cold filled up every inch of this place, this... construct of a young boy's imagination. The pervasive atmosphere enveloped her tightly, cutting through her clothes without care, and fervently clutched at her flesh, pawing and scraping and killing her, one cell at a time.

Worst of all was that there was no pain to blind her senses of reality. There was enough reddish light for her eyes to see the truth. Her body was still intact.

"The mind is but a stage filled with puppets." Ino chanted as feeble tremors rocked her body.

It felt like she was numb with cold, but she knew better than to believe that. Ino closed her eyes and whispered her lessons like a mantra.

"The mind is but a stage filled with puppets."

This place was not real. Her 'body' was just a construct of her imagination so... how? How could she lose control over her own imagination? The very idea left her confused and horrified.

'What's wrong with this place? Naruto... is this really your mind?'

Ino leaned against the concrete walls of a long hallway flooded up to her knees in still water, the barrier of its walls broken by many empty doorways leading into areas of unfathomable darkness, its ceiling serving as a guide for a network of pipes as they traveled along its length. All in all, the decor wouldn't look out of place in the village sewer.

"The mind... is but a stage... filled with puppets."

And that was it. Nothing else stood out and yet... It was certainly the most awful place she'd ever set foot in, figuratively speaking, far and beyond the village's forty-fourth training ground, nicknamed Forest of Death. It was inexplicable, the feeling of dread that assaulted her, and she knew that her confusion only made the experience worse.

"The mind..."

She shivered weakly as she tried once more to force movement into her arms, to shape her fingers into the hand-seal needed to make her escape but they would have none of it. They hung limply at her sides and stubbornly refused to budge. That frightened her more than she would have believed.

"Dad..." she spoke, her voice barely registering as a whisper to her own ears. "What am I supposed to do?"

He didn't answer, and she was somewhat ashamed to realize that she had hoped he would.

Ino knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that what she was feeling wasn't real. That was the only reason she managed the resist the panic that tried to take her mind apart as her 'body' weakened and fell further out of her control. Her knees wobbled dangerously as they struggled to support her weight, then collapsed, plunging her fully into the vile fluid that filled this horrible place.

'No...!'

The dive hit her hard, and left her feeling stiff and brittle like a block of ice, as though her body might crack apart if she didn't stay perfectly still.

"Urgh!" she groaned as an indescribable sensation surged from the depths of her being. It filled her up and left her feeling bloated, like she had just finished eating an Akimichi dinner, only with the nausea of overeating replaced by intense pain, as if her body has seized up into one giant cramp. She couldn't resist the urge to scream as the feeling increased, but could only hiss weakly, releasing a trail of tiny bubbles to caress her cheeks on their way to the surface.

For a moment, nothing more happened. Then, everything seemed to disappear, the pain, the terrible cold... everything just... slipped away...

The burning intensity of her agony faded into gentle warmth, and she found herself lulled and relaxed by the motions of the current. Her eyelids felt heavy, and the addition of their weight proved unbearable.

'So tired...'

Her eyes closed without resistance as the current carried her away.

Submerged in a sea of nothingness, drifting towards the unknown, she knew no fear.

She knew nothing.

…

"…I…"

Something tugged at the loose threads of her consciousness.

"…ease…ke up…"

It was a voice, and it felt somewhat familiar. If she could just focus, she might be able to…

"Please! Ino, wake up!"

That word was like a shot of adrenaline injected to her heart. Ino. Three letters, two syllables. It was a name.

Yamanaka Ino.

It was her name. She had forgotten it.

She had _forgotten_ her name!

The panic she had been repressing climbed out of the pit she had thrown it into and incited rebellion. Her composure was the first to reach the guillotine. Her entire body flailed about wildly, trying to escape something she couldn't see, hear or touch, something she couldn't confront and fight.

Something else quickly tried to restrain her, but only managed to agitate her even more, drawing a scream out of her throat as she redoubled her struggles.

"Ino, Ino, Ino! Stop it, calm down! Ow! I said stop, dammit!"

A pair of arms wrapped around her and held on tightly, but the effort proved to be no longer necessary. The sound of that voice expressing its owner's annoyance triggered something in her memories.

'I know that voice!'

And she quickly remembered her mission.

"Naruto!"

Her eyes opened wide, and she was left breathless.

"Oh man, I'm so sorry, Ino! I only meant to scare your old man a bit, I didn't think he'd send you in here!"

Seeing him as he fretted over her and held her upper body out of the water captivated her. She was entranced by his eyes. They were just impossibly blue, seeming to glow with the color. It was as if the red varnish that stained everything in this place wouldn't touch him, like the eldritch light that reflected off of his eyes was somehow changed by the contact. Purified. It made him seem different, otherworldly.

A faint flush spread to her cheeks and she closed her eyes quickly, feeling an intense desire to suppress it.

'I know I'm going crazy when Naruto, of all people, starts looking cute. He's a dork. Get a hold of yourself, girl.'

Unfortunately, Naruto took this as a sign that she was falling unconscious and began to shake her rather roughly.

"Ino, wake up!" he screamed.

With deft hands, she reached out to grab his jacket collar and tugged until their faces were only an inch apart. His eyes were wide open and as blue as the midday sky.

"Alright. I'm up. Stop doing that, right now."

He nodded repeatedly, so she let go of his collar.

"Help me up."

He did that too, then retreated to a safe distance. Immediately, she became utterly aware that she was soaked to the bone when the cold reared up its ugly head and took a bite right out of her, forcing her to shiver violently.

Naruto winced and scratched his jaw, looking embarrassed. "Oh yeah. Sorry about that."

He took three steps towards her and the difference was like a mountain top on the moon and a beach resort.

She couldn't help it. She closed her eyes and moaned. "Oooh wow, that feels sooo good."

"Um… Ino?"

She opened her eyes and saw the blush on his cheeks, but something else took hold of her mind and wouldn't let go until she cried uncle and submitted to its call.

"Hold still," she commanded as she marched towards him, splashing water around messily.

"What? H-hey! What are you doing? Let go! HEY! That's mine!" he complained as she unzipped his jacket and urgently pulled it off him.

"I need it more than you do! It's so damn _cold_ in here. You're a man, aren't you? Stop complaining."

Normally she wouldn't ever consider wearing something so atrocious, but desperate times called for desperate measures. So she completely ignored Naruto as he pouted and sulked, gathered her courage and pulled the monstrosity on, zipping it all the way up for good measure, and nearly melted as the warmth overwhelmed her.

"Ino? Are you okay?"

"Naruto," she called, keeping her eyes closed to preserve the experience. "I'm sorry for all those times I made fun of your jacket. This thing is glorious."

He laughed. "Sure thing! So, what are you doing here anyway? This place isn't all that welcoming."

Understatement of the year, that.

"Well, before that, I've got to ask you something." That something wasn't part of the mission parameters, but she had made a promise and she intended to fulfill it.

The boy cocked his head and asked, "What's that?"

"Are you the real one?"

Something in his whole demeanor changed, and Ino suddenly knew what he was going to say before the words even left his mouth.

"No, I'm not," he said with a grimace on his face. "That's why you're here? You're looking for him?"

She nodded sharply, now completely businesslike. She was lying, of course. Technically she was only supposed to wait until something happened and then report her findings, but why stop there?

'Might as well kill two with one shuriken and drag him out of here myself.'

Though, it made her uneasy to realize how easily she'd been fooled. If Sakura hadn't forced a promise out of her, then she probably would have made the same mistake as her father.

"Damn it," he swore. "I knew it was taking too long, but it's hard to tell the time down here. How long has it been?"

Ino shrugged. "I'm not sure. Three or four days, maybe?"

If anything, his expression soured even more after that revelation, but he kept his thoughts to himself and stared into empty space.

"So, do you know where he is?" she prodded, hoping for a reaction. "And what should I call you, anyway?"

He shrugged slightly, but didn't seem to be paying much attention as he answered. "I'm the watchman around here, so you can call me that."

Ino rolled her eyes. "Alright… Watchman. What exactly are you watching here?"

His eyes turned towards her. "Everything. The catacombs are the weak link. If anyone wants to get in or out, this is the place to do it."

"Okay then." She didn't understand a word he was saying, so she decided to cut to the chase. "So, about Naruto? You know where he is?"

Watchman's expression wavered, going through a gamut of emotions before settling into a mask of impassiveness. "Sort of," he mumbled. "But he's probably busy. I'll try to get a message to him, but you'll need to wait until he comes back."

Ino scoffed and crossed her arms, unable to believe that he was stonewalling her. "Right. What could he possibly be doing in here that's so important? Doesn't he know that people are worried about him? Hokage-sama has been trying to wake him up for days now! And Sakura…"

She trailed off. He stood with a bowed head and eyes tightly shut, his fists clenched tightly and his features twisted as if in pain, looking like the very picture of contrition. She needn't say another word.

Ino sloshed a path through the water, breaking the silence that smothered them as the sound echoed throughout the hallway. Her decision was made. She would go look for the boy herself, though it seemed like a real bother.

'You're so inconsiderate, Naruto! You'll never get a girlfriend at this rate.'

As she tried to move past Watchman, his fist whooshed before her eyes and slammed into the wall, cracking the concrete and blocking her path. His head was still bowed, but a single blue eye stared her down through his fringe as sand and fragments of rock plopped into the water below. Only now did she realize that he wasn't wearing his forehead protector.

"Sorry, Ino, but I can't let you pass."

She had never heard his voice sound like that, like a real shinobi, empty save for a hint of warning. It surprised her so that it must have shown on her face as she looked at him, incredulous. "You're really going to try and stop me?"

"I'm the watchman. Nothing gets in or out of this place without my permission." He didn't nod, or shrug, or move at all as he answered. Evidence of tight control.

'This… isn't Naruto.'

That realization meant that she couldn't keep treating him like an old classmate anymore, and would need to start treating him like the obstacle he was proving himself to be, like an enemy ninja under henge.

Her eyes narrowed and her hands tightened into fists. "Get out of my way."

She couldn't have made the warning in her voice any clearer, but far from making him back down, it seemed to do the opposite. A crooked grin split his lips, showing a hint of teeth.

"You wanna throw it down? Come on then. I'll even let you throw the first punch."

His black T-shirt clung to his upper body, showing tight, wiry muscles in relief, deceptive in their power. Though Ino successfully resisted the urge to grimace, her lips thinned in dismay as Watchman called her bluff.

Naruto's technique wasn't anything special, but he was tough and he was strong and if Watchman was anything like him, then he was just too dangerous to tangle with.

Ino wasn't under any illusions. She didn't have any weapons on her and she didn't even want to imagine what would happen if she dared to use her family's special techniques on Watchman. If they went the distance she would have to rely on straight taijutsu to take him down, a daunting proposition indeed.

"Tch…" There really was no way around it. She brought her hands together and entangled her fingers into a familiar handsign. "This isn't over."

The world quickly blurred into a mess of colors, gradually shifting towards total darkness. A black stain edged by blonde and orange occupied the very center of the picture. Near the top of the indistinct figure, two points of light glowed brightly in shocking blue, deviating not at all. Even when the world was engulfed in darkness, the two orbs remained, shining like fairy light.

Ino retreated, having completed her mission, and the world knew her no more.


	2. Trigger

In the summer of her thirteenth year, Haruno Sakura learned a few things about Uzumaki Naruto that made her fear for his life.

**Heresy**

**

* * *

**

_Chapter one_

It was almost funny how Naruto instinctively raised his hand as he interrupted their teacher, considering how he used to deliberately avoid doing so in class. She guessed that it spoke about how much respect he had for Hatake Kakashi. If it were anyone else, she would have thought it fear, but Naruto's bravado was big enough to bully his fear into doing whatever it wanted.

"Um, Kakashi-sensei?" Naruto asked hesitantly.

Kakashi turned to look at the young blonde, a slight frown on his one visible brow. With his forehead protector tied over his sharingan and a skintight mask covering the bottom half of his face, that one eye was really the only part of his face that could actually be seen. She used to find it annoying, but she'd gotten used to it, along with a lot of other things.

"What is it Naruto?"

Naruto slowly shook his head. "I'm tired."

Sakura could have heard a pin drop in the silence that settled over them.

One thing she had learned over the months spent with her team was that Naruto just didn't get tired. Ever. He was either at full power or he was totally exhausted and at the brink of death. There was no in-between for him.

…But now that she was looking for it, he did look unusually still. Naruto had so much energy that he usually fidgeted, tapping his feet or fingers, keeping himself in constant motion. Now, the only part of his body that she could see moving was his hair as it caught the wind.

Kakashi's uncovered eye blinked excessively, like he was trying to wipe dust from its cornea, but that was his only visible reaction.

"You're tired? Of what?"

Naruto's shoulders slumped. "How long are we going to have to keep doing these missions? It's just so boring… It's getting hard not to fall asleep."

Sakura's grimaced as she was reminded of the events of the past week, the seemingly endless hours her team spent moonlighting as farmers, babysitters, servants, caterers and in Naruto's case, a chew-toy. She repressed a shudder.

"Ahh… that." Kakashi's mask shifted slightly in a distinct manner that his students had long learned to associate with his smile. "You've grown up, Naruto. I was expecting you to speak up about this quite some time ago."

Her teacher turned his head towards the tree line and Sakura quickly understood that that comment wasn't just aimed at Naruto.

Sakura sighed wistfully.

'Sasuke-kun…'

The last Uchiha stood several feet away from the rest of the team, leaning on a tree trunk with his arms crossed over his chest and his head bowed as the wind ruffled the locks of hair that formed his unique hair style. His eyelids covered his eyes like blankets and his handsome face was relaxed, as though in sleep.

If she hadn't known any better, she would have thought him snoozing, but she had observed him enough to know that he was simply immersed in his thoughts.

The meaning behind Kakashi's comment was clear as glass. No matter how frustrated she felt about the recent dip in mission quality, she knew that it was only a fraction of how Sasuke must have felt. She was convinced that the only reason he didn't say anything is because Naruto had been keeping his usually big mouth shut, and there was no way Sasuke was going to break open the floodgates if Naruto of all people was still holding strong.

No matter how unlikely it had seemed back at the Academy, it truly seemed that the number one graduate really was taking his rivalry with the dead last seriously. But then… Naruto had gotten much stronger since then. The barking dog grew some fangs.

Oblivious to the undertones of the conversation, Naruto plowed ahead, grinning as he rubbed his nose with the length of his index finger. "Heh. Well, the old lady isn't like the old man. She's meaner, you know? _Really_ petty. The old man was like Miss Izama's German shepherd, but she's more like Yamazaki's pit bull. But, uh, don't tell her I said so."

The impudent boy happened to throw a glance her way, but quickly looked away as he met with the full force of her glare.

Naruto still didn't understand that his words and actions reflected on Team 7 as a whole, no matter how many times she tried to beat that lesson through his thick skull. He was very inconsiderate when it came to things like this. He said what he wanted, when he wanted and he damned the consequences. Sakura was always embarrassed when he failed to show proper respect. They were a TEAM, damn it! Even if Sasuke didn't seem to care and Kakashi rarely did anything about it, she couldn't just let it go.

In the aftermath of Naruto's declaration, Kakashi chuckled lightly, turned away from them and simply began to wander off. It seemed as though he was dragging Naruto's good humor along with him, because the boy's grin was quickly slipping off of his whiskered cheeks.

He looked rather worried as he sought to clarify their mutual understanding. "Hey sensei… you won't say anything, right? Really. She'll hurt me."

"Maa, maa, don't worry about it," Kakashi said, somehow managing to come across as being completely unreliable.

To her, anyway. Naruto didn't seem doubt his teacher's words, even for a second, seeing as how he immediately snapped onto the next subject. "Then, about the missions?"

"I'll pass your request on." Kakashi slowed to a stop and turned his head back towards them. "Oh, and don't bother showing up tomorrow. I won't be able to make it, so you guys can take a personal day."

Those words sent her eyes straight towards Sasuke, and her mind immediately started working on a plan to make him go out on a date with her.

"Oh, and no training. Do something else for a change." Kakashi's last instruction was clearly audible, sounding like he was standing just a few feet away, but when she turned to look he was nowhere to be found.

Which likely meant that he wasn't listening to Naruto's shouted complaints and that the boy should stop before he tore her eardrums.

"Damn it, Kakashi-sensei! Get back here! What kind of a teacher are you?"

Naruto had dashed past her in the seconds following Kakashi's departure and was currently standing against the empty space where their teacher had been, screaming his guts out. He was certainly putting a lot of effort into it, but he was clearly achieving nothing beyond venting some steam and annoying her.

"Naruto, shut up!" Sakura screamed as she stomped towards him. "Sensei isn't here and he wouldn't change his mind even if he could actually hear you. It's just one day, so deal with it!"

Naruto turned to glare at her for a brief moment before he realized what he was doing. As soon as he did, his head dropped and his expression crumpled into a pathetic pout.

"This sucks," he mumbled and petulantly kicked the ground, throwing up a small shower of dirt and grass.

Sakura was about to berate him for the pointless destruction of their meeting place when she noticed that Sasuke had shoved off of his perch and was walking off.

"Sasuke-kun! You're leaving?" she asked, feeling disappointed, in a last-ditch attempt to stall him.

"You guys are too loud. I'm going home."

That was the extent of Sasuke's explanation, but the look in his eyes said quite a bit more. His expression was tempestuous and tense, and she realized that Sasuke was just as frustrated by Kakashi's edict as Naruto, even if he had more restraint. The object of her affections was probably going to head straight home and train until he collapsed out of spite, so she watched him go silently, knowing that she couldn't make him stay.

…but she couldn't let go of the idea that he might have stayed longer if someone hadn't been so annoying.

"Nice going, Na—" She cut herself off. He wasn't there.

"Where did he…" she looked around and found him a ways away, stomping off with his hands shoved in his pockets.

Sakura sighed and decided to head home. Tomorrow was going to be a big day, and she needed to prepare.

* * *

The glass felt impossibly heavy as the pull of gravity wrenched it from his fingers, sending it on a collision course with the wood beneath his feet. It struck the kitchen floor and cracked in a thousand places, cutting the air a thousand times in an instant with notes as sharp as daggers, and broke apart into a thousand sharp edges. Cold water splashed onto his naked feet, the shock of it sending a shiver up his spine, and just like that, he could breathe again.

His left arm slammed against the kitchen counter and was quickly called upon to support his entire weight, as his legs wobbled in weakness. His teeth clenched together tightly as sweat coursed down his face, following the ridges formed by his grimace.

"What's… What…"

He couldn't even recognize his own voice through all the pain and panic. It felt like his blood was approaching its boiling point, like it was all about to bubble and pop his veins like overstuffed balloons. His lungs burned, like he was being poisoned by his own breath. He held onto it for an agonizing moment, then gave up, exhaling until there was nothing left. The worst of the pain quickly left the stage, but relief missed its cue and was found to have disappeared.

His vision blurred and darkened along the edges, like he suffered from tunnel vision, and he was getting numb all over, losing feeling in his extremities followed by his limbs, the numbness spreading until he couldn't feel anything at all anymore. It was almost as if he was dreaming, like his spirit had left his body and could only experience the world through dull images and sound, like on a cheap television.

The image his eyes perceived suddenly lost all definition and melted into shapeless colors, and it took a second for him to realize that he was falling.

The cutting edges digging into his body didn't make much sound at all.

It didn't hurt either.

* * *

The boy landed badly, slamming into the ground like a meteor, bleeding off his momentum as he skipped along the grass and rocks like a stone on a lake's surface. The dirt was soft and moist from the recent rains, and he couldn't help but feel that he wouldn't have survived if that wasn't the case.

A feeling of urgency urged him on even as he skidded to a stop, lending his limbs strength and purpose, allowing them to flip him onto his front before they tried to push him onto his feet, only to fail as his arms struggled under his own weight, as if gravity had suddenly decided to bill his muscles with the fox's weight as well as his own.

His favorite jacket was tattered, dirtied and useless, so he twisted around and strained to drag it off, leaving him with nothing other than his ripped black t-shirt for protection as he threw it out of the way. Against all logic, the subtraction of that slight burden seemed to bring his total weight under the limit of manageability, as his next attempt to rise left him standing on shaky knees.

"Haa… haa… haa…"

The air filtered by the forbidden trees around him seemed reluctant to lodge in his lungs, but he didn't hold that against it, considering how flooded and uninhabitable they were. He tried to cough some of the fluid up and almost ended up choking as his controlled coughs quickly escalated into fierce hacking. Gravity took advantage of his weakness, forcing him down until he fell to one knee, wheezing painfully. Warm blood dribbled down his chin, and as he used the back of his hand to wipe it off, his sense of urgency flared up worse than ever before.

He didn't need to wonder why. His enemy had finally caught up.

_He_ emerged from the shadows between trees, approaching like an old man on a leisurely stroll, with measured, unhurried steps. His enemy was naked save for a pair of ragged orange pants torn off at the knees and a set of matching accessories. A quintet of golden rings dulled by grime were wrapped around each of his extremities. One rested just above each bare foot, around his ankles, another was on each wrist, and the last and biggest ring pressed slightly into his neck. Blond hair, longer and wilder than his own, framed his enemy's face, but the lack of expression on his features made him seem more like a soulless golem than a real being.

The mere sight of his enemy was enough to stir up his emotions and rouse the cumbersome beast that was his anger. His lungs opened wide and swallowed all the air they could handle, and like a fool, he released it immediately, along with droplets of spittle and blood.

"Damn you, bastard!" he screamed raucously. "Stop looking down on me!"

His enemy did not seem to care about his fury or his burning need for respect, as he did not speak, did not pause, did not hurry. Indeed, his enemy's pace was unperturbed, relentless. It seemed slow, but prior experience taught him that it was as unstoppable as the tide.

His teeth clenched in frustration before he squeezed his eyes shut and forced himself to relax, knowing that his enemy would not accelerate, just as he would not slow down.

"This isn't over," he muttered. This wasn't the end, it wasn't. He needed to believe that.

Precious seconds passed as he gathered his confidence, the belief he had in himself that had allowed him to survive until now, the conviction that he deserved to exist, same as everyone else, the certainty that he would become **great** dwelling within his soul.

"I won't let myself fall," he promised.

It was faith, pure and simple, because even if no one else believed in him, as long as he believed in himself, he could keep on fighting, no matter what he stood up against. As long as he had hope, he could always find a way to win.

And he wouldn't lose this fight. Not to this enemy, his enemy.

"I won't let you beat me!" he screamed.

The boy climbed to his feet and stared into the face of evil, with his passion bubbling inside him so that the touch of fatigue could no longer sway him, so that the grip of pain could no longer hold him. "I am Uzumaki Naruto!" he screamed to his enemy, and to the world. "I will become the greatest of all who will ever bear the name Hokage! I will not fall here!"

His enemy showed no reaction, but he did not care. His legs were bolstered by his conviction, and his fists burned with the fire of his purpose.

He ran, cutting deeply into the distance between them with long, confident strides. His enemy's approach did not deviate so he sent his fist out to greet him, backed by the synergy of his entire body, but he could only take notice as his enemy fluidly slipped under his fist and disappeared from his sight. With the speed he'd managed to generate, he knew that he would need several feet to slow to a stop, but before he could take another step his momentum carried him into an arm set at chest height, solid like a steel pole and utterly unmovable, and he folded over it like laundry set out to dry under the sun. His breath on the other hand kept right on going, and as his chest absorbed the force of his own momentum, he was left in breathless agony, completely stunned.

Warm fingers quickly dug under his shirt collar and wrenched him down, sending him slamming into the ground. The back of his head hit something solid and his vision wobbled and blurred, like he was seeing the world through a thick wall of water. His faculties were compromised and damaged, but he still managed to recognize the foot that was hurtling towards his face.

The boy gathered every scrap of energy he could muster and forced himself to move, rolling out of the way so that the kick wouldn't crack his skull to pieces. He wasn't fast enough though, and it still grazed him along the temple, shredding the skin and letting loose a steady stream of warm and thick blood.

That sense of urgency was getting unbearably loud, screaming all-out into his innermost ear and jumping incessantly inside his brain. The impact resonated into a pounding headache so strong that he had no choice but to push himself up onto his hands and knees just to get it to ease up a little.

He opened his lungs and welcomed the first breath to meet him in what seemed like an eternity with opened arms. He gasped and wheezed, but he breathed. An uncomfortable feeling swelled up in the back of his mind, completely unrelated to the pain, and he knew that he was being watched.

His enemy was looking down on him again.

He grit his teeth and climbed onto one knee. "Bastard…" he swore.

Naturally, his enemy didn't say a word and he was almost torn out of his mind with fury. No one he had ever fought had ever showed him such disdain, such disrespect, no matter how much they supposedly outclassed him. Not Zabuza, not Neji, not Gaara… hell, not even Orochimaru and Kabuto had dismissed him in such a manner.

No more. If his enemy would not speak like a man, then he would make him squeal like swine.

The fingers of his right hand spread open wide as if holding a bowl aloft, and the essence of his power responded to his call, gathering to the center of his palm. As his chakra began to pool and overflow, his left hand melded and sculpted it continuously, granting it a shape and a path to follow though. Countless swirling spirals of soft light, a contained tornado was born on the palm of his hand.

He charged, wordlessly bellowing his wrath to his enemy, with his chakra bullet, his rasengan, brandished like a poisoned dagger.

His enemy watched him come with the patience of a Seer. The expression did not suit him, discordant as it was with the innate fury burning in those beastly red eyes, set in a face that so strongly mirrored his own, whiskers and all.

His enemy was stronger than him, faster than him and more skilled than him. As a combatant, his enemy was better in every way, even if their bodies were identical. But he wouldn't give up.

He couldn't.

His life was on the line.


	3. Impact

_Chapter two_

The next morning marked the beginning of a picture perfect summer day in the village of Konohagakure. The sun shone bright over the land and smothered everything from the architecture to the flora in its warmth. Its enthusiasm was such that it might have proved suffocating if it weren't for the refreshing breeze touring through the village, ruffling leaves and cooling bodies without muscling in where it was unwanted.

Sakura couldn't help but smile as she opened her balcony door and stepped out into the world, basking in its magnificence.

'Perfect weather. Today is going to be a great day!'

Today was a good day to be Haruno Sakura, all things considered. It was Team Seven's day off and she couldn't be happier. Getting away from stupid, stupid clients and their asinine requests was more than enough to put a smile on her face.

A beautiful day lay ahead of her, full of fun activities and opportunities, but even that didn't make this good day into a great one. There was still something missing. Or really, someone. Male companionship was something every young kunoichi in Konoha wanted, and there was only one young man in her age group who was good enough to chase after. Luckily for her, this young man happened to be a member of her three-man cell.

To make things even better, Kakashi had expressly forbidden them from doing any sort of training on their day off! Yesterday she'd had to deal with Naruto's disgruntled complaints and Sasuke's silent rage, but today promised to be a much better day. Even if Sasuke disagreed with their sensei's decision, he wasn't stupid enough to actually disobey, unlike their other teammate, and that meant that his social agenda was freed for the first time in years.

Now, she just needed to find him and relieve him of his boredom. If he just gave her a chance, then she was sure that he would have a good time, which would certainly improve his disposition considering future outings. She had it all planned out, and convincing him to go along with her plan wouldn't take too much time. He was unlikely to just ignore her because of their affiliation and he really didn't have anything better to do.

Uchiha Sasuke was a loner. The only person in his life that could be called a friend in any sense of the word was Naruto, and they didn't exactly spend time together outside of work. Probably because the time they spent together during work wasn't always pleasant. In fact, it wasn't even usually pleasant. One could even say that the time they spent together was rarely ever pleasant.

In any case, she didn't think Sasuke really knew how to entertain himself outside of training and he likely wouldn't spend any time around people he didn't know very well. So for the next several hours he was going to be alone with nothing to do, obsessing over the time he was wasting.

All she had to do was push him a little and he would take the path of least resistance.

For this occasion, she had chosen among her deadliest weapons: a pair of stylish sunglasses, a pair of decorative sandals and a knee length white sundress under a wide-rimmed straw sunhat. And to top it all off, a subtle, delicate smile.

"Hehe. Sasuke-kun, you don't stand a chance."

* * *

"No."

"But—"

"No."

The finality of his decision was unmistakable. He would not be accompanying her today.

"But why?" she pleaded.

"There is something I need to take care of today."

He did not even bother to look at her. The slight, intentional or not, scorched her insides. She itched to grab at his handsome face and force him to acknowledge her, before the feeling passed and she was left feeling nauseous.

But she couldn't give up. Not without a reason.

"But— but Kakashi-sensei said—"

"I'm not going to train."

"Then _what_?" Her composure was beginning to slip. She'd almost raised her voice at him.

Maybe he sensed the beginnings of hysterical mania inside of her, but Sasuke finally looked away from his backpack and towards her. His gaze was cold and pitiless, but it was an improvement nonetheless.

"I'm going to visit my clan's resting place. I need to pay my respects. I'm not going to have time to do anything else."

Her eyes seemed to slide off him as she prepared to ask another question. "Why not?"

"There are a lot of graves."

She remained silent as he grabbed and packaged his supplies. In return, he ignored her presence until the very last moment.

"Don't forget to close the door on your way out."

And so, with no perceivable hesitation, the sum of her hopes and dreams strolled out of his apartment, leaving her behind once again, without looking back even once.

And this newest failure would basically set the tone for the rest of her morning. Like always, Sakura had set aside a large portion of herself and put it into an investment that never seemed to pay off. Like always, she would spend the following hours drifting along the waves of depression and inadequacy, and like always, a good day turned out to be just average, rather than spectacular.

Her hand moved to wipe off a stray tear, and she quietly made her way outside her teammate's apartment, making sure to close the door behind her.

* * *

'There are a lot of graves…'

Her mind rolled over his words as she wandered underneath the midday sun, away from anyone that might wish to speak to her.

She had never given much thought to the idea that Sasuke was the only Uchiha left. It was… disquieting, to say the least. She knew that his clan had been murdered a little over four years ago, because everyone knew it. The Uchiha clan had fostered a significant portion of the village's work force. The loss of so many competent ninja had been a blow to Konoha's reputation, a blow that could not be glossed over in such a short time.

Her teammate didn't exactly talk about his past, or even his present. He was always alone, but she often had the feeling that this was by design rather than by circumstance.

"Maybe I should have asked if he wanted some help?" she murmured, before sighing despondently. "This wouldn't be so hard if he would just talk to me…"

She could never tell what he was thinking, and in all honesty, that was part of what had attracted her to him in the first place. Only now his mysterious nature only served to keep them apart. It was disheartening, depressing and more than a little frustrating. It was little wonder her plans kept failing when she wasn't fully aware of all the variables, it was like trying to predict the weather using a picture of the sky!

Her feet abruptly ceased their steady progression as she was touched by an anxious feeling. Her diaphragm stiffened under the uncomfortable weight of another being's presence.

There was someone near. She was no longer alone.

Looking up front, she searched her surroundings for a few moments before suddenly noticing a streak of black hair. Someone was kneeling in the undergrowth away from the beaten path. Someone familiar.

Her brows bunched together as her lips quietly mouthed the name of a young woman who, in her experience, seemed to embody the concept of demure silence. The eldest daughter of the Hyuuga main family.

"Hyuuga Hinata?"

A seed of suspicion was planted in fertile ground. Hyuuga Hinata was about as close to nobility as people got in her village. What was she doing here, of all places? A quick look around searching for landmarks assured Sakura that she was effectively in the middle of nowhere.

Slowly, she pulled the large sunhat off of her head and sat it down beside her, still watching her target. No reaction. Hinata seemed to be completely engrossed in whatever she was doing, which allowed Sakura to carefully step forward, making full use of the sneaking techniques she had been taught. Even so, she only managed to take a few steps before being spotted.

Her fifth step was interrupted by a sharp, startled squeak. Sakura's eyes narrowed and her mood was tinged with irritation, but she grudgingly relaxed when she realized how she'd been spotted. Still slightly disgruntled, she moved to pick up the hat she had discarded.

Hinata came rustling out of the bushes, blushing red as she struggled to find something to say. Her head tipped down and her right hand passed nervously through her short hair, revealing fading swollen blood vessels leading to her pale lavender eyes. The Hyuuga family's most precious possession, the byakugan eye. Hinata finally settled on something to say, but found difficulty in actually saying it. The words were stuttered and the delivery was much louder than was required.

"S-Sakura-san! W-what are you doing here?"

Oh yeah. The girl was definitely guilty.

Sakura smiled charmingly and calmly closed the distance between them. "Good afternoon, Hinata-san," she greeted, bowing slightly. "How are you today?"

The flush that graced Hinata's cheeks grew deeper as she realized that her manners had been sacrificed at the altar of her embarrassment. She immediately bowed back, unmistakably taking a position of inferiority. When she spoke, her voice was back to its usual soft tones.

"Um… Good afternoon, Sakura-san. I am well."

"Is this also Team 8's day off?"

She nodded. "Hokage-sama sent all of our teachers on an assignment. She said that we should take the opportunity to relax and socialize."

Sakura's right eye began to twitch involuntarily as the day's frustrations reached a peak. 'Damn it, sensei! This is your fault!'

Maybe she wouldn't even be in this situation if her teacher had taken the time to tell his students what they were actually supposed to be doing today! But her anger did not last, as her reality cast a shadow large enough to force it into obscurity. She sighed softly, having lost the urge to question the young woman in front of her. Still, she had a conversation to finish and so chose to offer the girl an easy way out.

"So, Hinata-san, did you lose something here or something?"

The girl's reaction was very telling. Her complexion, which had been drawing close to its usual fairness, began burning so quickly that she started to sway on her feet. Sakura quickly reached out to help support her, but missed as Hinata stumbled out of her reach. Blinking, Sakura stared at her hand and wondered if Hinata had dodged intentionally. She looked up to see the girl leaning lightly against a tree, her face still as bright as a bonfire.

"Sakura-san, I don't think… I don't feel very well," she said, her voice as steady as Sakura had ever heard it. Her pale eyes started to edge up, only to veer off course and end up fixed on an errant root yards away from where Sakura was standing. "I think I'm going to head home now. Goodbye," Hinata said, before hurrying out of the area.

Jade eyes followed her every step of the way. For a second, Sakura thought about chasing after her or asking if she wanted help, but then thought better of it. Politeness only went so far, especially if it was only a veneer. Besides, she was sure Hinata wanted to be left alone.

With Hinata gone, Sakura no longer had any reason to remain in this isolated corner of the village. While she still didn't know what had brought her old classmate here in the first place, it probably wasn't any of her business.

Weird didn't even begin to describe it, but she had other things to do.

* * *

'It's not like I have nothing else to do, or anything. I'm just… trying to get to know my coworker better. Yeah, that sounds about right.'

The idea broke through that the fact that she felt the need to justify her actions to her own conscience spoke heavily of her parents' indoctrination. Going over that thought for any length of time felt awkward, so she ended up shoving it all out of her mind, grimacing all the while. Pointless rebellion was not her style.

"Sakura-chan?"

_Thud. Bamf! _

Her fist reacted before her eyes. As it was, she only managed to catch a glimpse of surprise and blue eyes before everything burst into white smoke.

She pressed her hand over her heart as she tried to catch her startled breath. Eying her surroundings with a wary eye, she reflected over the question of how. Specifically, how the hell did he do it? Digging through layer after layer of dense foliage in relative silence was not an easy task, so she could easily accept the idea that she had gotten sloppy. That still didn't explain how he'd managed to come within three feet of her without being detected. Sakura resolved to ask him to elucidate this mystery when she found him again, and set off once her breath was safely recovered. Maybe he would also know what Hinata had been doing in the area.

It didn't take long for her to run into him again, since she stopped caring about making noise and increased her rate of travel accordingly. As she often did, she heard his exuberance long before she sat eyes upon his form.

Her path brought her to a large clearing edged against a shallow creek where rushing water followed a winding road surrounded on all sides by smooth rocks and vibrant, short grass. She stopped a moment to take in the scenery.

The moment passed and was followed by another.

And another.

"Um… Sakura-chan?"

This time, her surprise was dulled by anticipation, so her reflexes were outpaced by recognition and short-circuited. She glanced at the boy and turned back to the scene, taking note of the space between them. He stood half a pace beyond her attack range, which was about a full pace farther than his preferred distance.

"Naruto… what are you doing?" she asked, her voice drenched in unease.

From the corner of her eye, she saw him reach behind his head, presumably so that he could attempt to scratch the confusion out of his thick skull. When he realized that she wasn't going to elaborate, he hesitatingly turned so that he stood parallel to her and joined her in staring.

Those clueless eyes of his were doubtlessly seeing the same thing she was. Populating the entire clearing were a number of boys visibly engaging in recreation. Their number surpassed what she could easily count and every single boy was an exact twin of the one standing beside her, give or take a few articles of clothing.

Her eyes detected three clear groupings. A rough third of the blond heads were frolicking in the creek, all of them stripped down to their underwear. Without looking too closely, she managed to discern that this group seemed to be mostly wrestling and water fighting.

The next group was both larger and fully clothed and was therefore much safer to observe. This group seemed to be entangled in a team game revolving around a football, pitting the orange jackets versus the black T-shirts. She would have said that they were playing the actual game of football if any of the identical players had behaved in any manner resembling football players. As it was, they were just screwing around pointlessly, making enough noise to drown out a hurricane.

The last group was the smallest and consisted entirely of scattered pairs of blue eyes alternating between staring at one another and staring at her.

Finally, after a minute of silent contemplation, the blond standing at her side gave up. He turned his head towards her. "Sakura-chan, I don't know what you mean. Is something wrong? You sound kind of weird."

Instead of giving him an answer, she turned to him and asked him a question. "Naruto, is it just you here?"

He nodded unwaveringly, taking no time to think. "Yep."

"Isn't there anyone you can play with?"

"No, not today. Konohamaru has school."

Her brows furrowed. There was something odd about this. "Isn't there anyone else?"

"Nope."

She couldn't quite put her finger on it, but she kind of got the feeling that Naruto wasn't acting correctly. Her eyes flitted over his features and found nothing of immediate import, so she prodded him with a suggestion. "What about Kiba? Hokage-sama gave everyone in our graduating class the day off."

His eyes suddenly focused on a point behind her and the muscles around his mouth seemed to stiffen so slightly that she almost discarded the motion as a figment of her imagination. "I don't want him to get in trouble," he said.

She blinked in surprise. That didn't make sense. "Why would he get in trouble?"

He shrugged. "His mom doesn't like me."

His tone was so pragmatic and he seemed so untroubled by this fact that she accepted this allegation immediately and moved on. "Well, what about… Shikamaru and Chouji?"

"Their parents don't like me either, especially Chouji's dad."

She frowned in disapproval and asked the obvious question. "What did you do to him?"

"I was born."

The words were delivered so flippantly that she couldn't really take them seriously. "But… but… didn't you always play with them back at the academy?"

"Nah, that was just work. They would have gotten in trouble if they hung out with me."

He was making less and less sense every time he opened his mouth. "How was that work?"

His eyes closed and he nodded solemnly. "We were _comrades_," he said emphatically. "We had to cooperate if we wanted to escape our evil, tyrannical teachers, so we did. Sometimes we celebrated our more spectacular victories, but we never _really_ played together."

"Well, who did you usually spend time with?"

This time, it took him a few moments to answer. "The old man, before he died."

The silence that followed was somewhat awkward, and she found herself pussyfooting around their conversation. A few moments were enough for her to swallow the emptiness in her mouth and replace it with meaningful sound. "What about now?"

"Um… Ero-sennin, baa-chan, Iruka-sensei, Shizune-neechan—"

She quickly stopped him. "People your own age, Naruto."

"Oh, well that's you, Sakura-chan!" he said with a great, big smile on his face. "Oh, and the bastard, I guess," he added, mumbling quietly.

A moment passed unimpeded.

"No one else?"

He shook his head. "Not really. We don't work with the other genin very often, so I don't get to see them much." He shrugged then, as if to say: What can I do about it?

"Why don't you visit them then?"

A wry smile slipped onto his features. "I don't want them to get in trouble."

Speech eluded her for a short time. "Their parents can't _all_ dislike you, Naruto."

The blond reached around the back of his head and scratched idly. "Why not?"

She tried to find an answer for him. She really did.

"Is that why you never tried to visit me? Do my parents…"

She looked at him and found that she couldn't see his eyes, covered as they were by folds of tanned skin.

"Don't worry Sakura-chan. Your parents are good people."

His smile sent tendrils of reassurance through her. She almost found herself smiling back until the realization hit that he hadn't answered her question.

Her line of sight latched onto the grass beneath her sandals. She tried to bring it up to meet his eyes but her resolve ran out of steam somewhere around his jaw line. This conversation sure turned out to be unexpectedly personal. If he had been the one to interrogate her in such a way, she definitely would have told him that it was none of his business. That made her curious. "Hey, Naruto. Why do you answer my questions?"

Naruto scratched at his forehead. "Um… I wasn't supposed to? No one's ever asked me anything like this before."

It was like an invasive weight pressing against her chest, both discomforting and awkward. Her face twisted like her tongue bathed in cough syrup and suddenly she couldn't even look in his general vicinity. But, she couldn't leave it at that. She had to make sure.

"Really? Never?"

"Well, no. The old man didn't have to ask, he just knew. Maybe it's because he was the Hokage… or because he was old. One or the other."

A moment filled with silence stretched between them.

"Wait a second…" Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. That didn't make sense.

She looked up into the clearing and found it entirely devoid of the activity that had captured her attention earlier. The contingent of copies that had populated it all seemed to have dissolved into nothing. All save for one.

She stepped closer to the youth standing at her side, a little unnerved despite herself. "Naruto, your clone. He's… staring at us."

"Hmm?" He stared at his identical twin for a second. "Oh, that's not my clone."

"What!"

Why the hell was he so nonchalant?

"What the hell is it then?"

"He's a clone of the Original," he answered.

Her expression's temperature dropped swiftly. "Stop kidding around," she growled.

"Huh? I'm not kidding."

"Are you stupid? If that's a clone of the original and you're the original—"

He shook his head. "But I'm not the original."

Pause.

"What?"

"I'm not the original."

Pause.

"What are you saying?"

"I'm not the—"

"I heard you the first time!" she yelled. Sighing, she moved a hand up to massage her forehead. "If neither of you is the original, then where is he?"

"No idea," he said. She turned to the other one, looking for something more but he simply shrugged his ignorance.

"Naruto, if you're playing a prank on me…"

The clone at her side brought his hands up in surrender. "I'm not, I swear!"

She advanced on him. "I don't believe you. Stand still."

_Thud._

"Oof!" Her fist buried itself in his gut.

_Bamf!_

His form dissolved into a cloud of floating particles.

She whirled towards the last remaining blond. "Naruto! I can't believe you let me have an intimate conversation with one of your stupid kage bunshin!"

"Wait!"

_Thud! Bamf!_

"W-what?" She turned to her empty surroundings and started yelling. "Naruto! This isn't funny. Where are you?"

Quiet.

A rumbling noise escaped the back of her throat to express her frustration. "Damn it Naruto, when I find you, you'll be sorry."

Sakura stalked out of the clearing, intent on finding her wayward teammate and equally intent on ignoring the uneasy feeling that settled in her navel.

* * *

She never found him.

Sakura sacrificed the remainder of her day off in her efforts to find her lost teammate. She found no tracks leading from the clearing, despite the number of kage bunshin it had contained. She had tried looking for him all over the village, but he hadn't been in any of his favorite places. She'd even tried going to his apartment, but no one had answered the door.

When the sun dropped past the horizon she resigned herself to failure, knowing that she would never find him in the darkness.

So, she never found him.

This fact rumbled in the far-off corners of her mind like a hibernating mammal. She couldn't quite ignore it, but she could tune it out.

This willful disregard is what allowed her to greet her approaching teammate without showering him with furious spittle or disturbing his hairstyle through the force of her screams. This boy hadn't done anything to deserve her ire.

"Good morning, Sasuke-kun."

Sasuke turned his head halfway towards her and nodded. He continued past her and walked towards one of the larger trees, where he settled in to wait for their teacher.

For once, she didn't try to make conversation with him, preoccupied as she was with visions of retribution and punishment. Anticipation built up on the inside her chest, putting pressure on her lungs and forcing her to take deeper breaths. She was vexed and she did little to diminish the feeling. She couldn't wait for the moment where she would be able to give Naruto a piece of her mind.

A spindly man crept into her field of vision without warning, almost startling her with his proximity. She didn't cry out though, or even react in any obvious manner. In this place, at least, she knew to expect the unexpected.

Beyond him, she noticed Sasuke stepping onto the grass towards their position while the man crossed his arms and looked about their meeting place like he couldn't quite believe the scene placed before his uncovered eye.

"Hmm? What's this? Where's the third duckling?"

Sakura opened her mouth to answer, but stalled as her mind was overcome by the incongruity of the situation. In effect, her mouth hung open as Sasuke jerked to a stop, clearly coming to the same realization as her.

The man looked between the two of them repeatedly while she regained control over her tongue. She closed her mouth, almost shakily, and gulped. "Kakashi-sensei? You're… early."

The awe in her voice was palpable. Even Sasuke looked a little gobsmacked.

Kakashi eyed her for a moment before shaking his head. "No, I'm actually fifteen minutes late."

"That's early for you, sensei."

He looked away, passing over the surroundings again. "So, where is your teammate?"

"Naruto? He probably overslept."

Her tone of voice had been clearly dismissive, but her teacher latched on to something she couldn't detect and his gaze snapped onto her frowning face. "What makes you say that? Did you run into him yesterday?"

Tough question. "Not really."

"Where did you see him?"

It was like he hadn't heard her. "I didn't," she found herself denying.

He took a step towards her, and all of a sudden she found herself thinking that Hatake Kakashi was a very scary man. His expression was just as laid back as always and his posture was relaxed, but she found that she was unnerved by him in spite of that. She caught her hand before it began to move towards her weapons pouch.

"Why did you say 'not really' then, instead of no?" Kakashi asked.

She avoided meeting his eye. Her breath was beginning to accelerate and she decided to quit while she was ahead. "Well… I ran into a few clones of his, but he wasn't with them."

"What were they doing?"

She shrugged helplessly. "I don't know, lots of things."

"What kind of things, Sakura?"

It was the undercurrent of steel beneath his voice that broke the camel's back. She brought her eyes up to meet his and almost began to shout. "Sensei, you're interrogating me. What's going on? Is Naruto in trouble?"

He was silent for just a beat. "No. He didn't do anything wrong." He turned towards Sasuke and motioned for them both to follow. "Come on, let's go wake him up." He set a brisk pace as he walked off, but neither of his students moved to follow him.

Sakura turned and caught Sasuke's eye. Her teammate held it for a second and turned away to follow after his teacher. She watched them both go for a long moment.

The caverns in the back of her mind grew hot, and the furry mammal woke up with a fierce bellow.

"He didn't do anything wrong… right, sensei?" Sakura whispered, eying his back as he stalked away. "But, that doesn't mean he isn't in trouble, does it?"

The feeling was like a thousand tiny eggs breaking apart to release a swarm of creepy-crawlies in the middle of her intestines. She swallowed bile and bitterness and wondered where her anger had gone. She missed it. It had done such a marvelous job covering up the anxiety.

She took another moment to gather herself, and hurried off in pursuit.

* * *

Kakashi's swift pace screeched to a halt so abruptly that it was almost as if he'd walked into a wall. Sakura and Sasuke continued past him for a couple of strides before turning back, eying him perplexedly. The trio stood about a dozen paces away from the entrance to Naruto's apartment. The hallway that enclosed them was clean and clearly lit, and neither of them could see anything that should occupy their teacher's attention to such a degree.

The teacher looked to his students and reminded them that ninja should always look for information beyond what is provided by the eyes. "I smell blood."

Anxiety was replaced with uncomprehending disbelief. She could say nothing in the face of something so inconceivable.

Sasuke flinched as if he'd lost control of his entire body for an instant, and spoke for the first time that morning. "Naruto?" he asked, his voice filled with dreadful expectation.

"Yes."

"How much?"

"More than enough."

Disbelief was replaced by fear and confusion. The usual questions popped up and rooted themselves into her consciousness. What, who, how, when?

Why?

They found themselves before his door in the space between two heartbeats. Sasuke reached to open the door rather forcefully but was pulled back by Kakashi. Their teacher paid no attention to the boy's furious, outraged face and quickly cut his left thumb with a knife she never saw him reach for. He pushed the wound against his other fingertips, spreading his blood so that all ten gleamed red. Sakura and Sasuke watched as if in a daze as Kakashi pressed his bloody fingers on either side of Naruto's door, eyes closed in concentration.

It happened with no warning, no spread, no growth. One moment there was nothing and the other saw the wall covered in black symbols that seemed like language, only not. She saw Sasuke step back in surprise and knew that she would have as well had she not been so fascinated. It was the largest sealing array that she had ever seen in her entire life. It was clearly focused around Naruto's door and spread out through the entire hallway. It didn't extend across the floor or ceiling, except directly above and under the entrance to his apartment. It was magnificent.

It was absurd. She didn't know its purpose, but she knew that Naruto couldn't possibly have need of it. Maybe it was something left behind by the previous owner?

Sasuke approached the seal work, his hand kept less than an inch away and his eyes blazing red. "An illusion? This is—"

A rough hand crashed onto his shoulder, interrupting him. "A state secret," Kakashi said. "Neither of you shall speak of this, especially not to Naruto." He turned to her and made sure that she had heard him, made sure that she had detected the warning in his tone.

She could only nod breathlessly. Before either of them could think up appropriate words, Kakashi turned to the opened door and walked in. They followed without prompt, remembering what it was that they were here to do.

Naruto's apartment was small as it was only meant to put up one person. It had exactly three rooms. The outside hallway door led directly to the kitchen, which, like the rest of the apartment, was built on a wooden floor. To the right of the entrance was an empty doorframe that led to a short hallway and two closed doors. One of those doors led to his bathroom and the other led to his bedroom. The arch was so close to the apartment entrance that one would have to close the front door to continue on to the rest of the apartment.

The front door was still open, but it didn't obstruct any of them from seeing the stained shards of glass floating in a pool of day old blood. Now that she was in the apartment proper, she wondered how she could have missed smelling it. Her hand moved in front of her mouth, to hold in a gasp and to block out the sickening stench.

Sasuke stood in front of her, his body shivering. His eyes were fixed onto the blood stain, but his mind was clearly somewhere else.

She knew what he was thinking about. She'd heard the rumors, same as everyone else. Sasuke walked home to find his entire clan murdered, slaughtered even. She imagined that the sight and smell of this apartment brought back awful memories.

She tried to muster up the desire, the need to comfort and failed. She couldn't do anything for him, she wasn't strong enough. She couldn't take his pain without doubling hers, and she felt as if doing so would break her apart.

'I'm sorry Sasuke-kun. Naruto…'

Her eyes closed tightly. The fingers held over her face dug into the skin.

When her eyes opened themselves to the world, Kakashi was kneeling over the extensive blood stain, examining it carefully. Seconds later, his head jerked to the side, just before the sound of an opening door reached their ears.

By the time the approaching footsteps reached the obstructing door, Sakura was waiting with Sasuke outside of the apartment, on either side of the doorway. Looking into his eyes was painful, so her eyes drifted down until she noticed one of his hands clutching at one of his kunai like he was trying to squeeze water out of it.

The door was pushed into swinging towards them, blocking their view of the room. They heard the rustling of clothing, a body hitting the floor, a short scream. And then, uncertainty.

"Naruto?"

"Kakashi-sensei?" The voice was garbled and indistinct, but still easily recognizable.

The look on Sasuke's face was one she'd never really seen before. She didn't have much time to observe it before he went rushing into the apartment, but it was definitely one of the only times she'd ever seen him smile. At the very least, she could tell that he was glad, happy even.

That should have made her happy too, if nothing else. It was definitive proof that he cared. It was proof that all her effort wasn't in vain, that he could learn to love her like she loved him, if only she didn't give up. It should have given her hope. But the worry was still there. The fear still cut at her composure, like it was trimming off her rationality. She didn't wonder why.

"Fool me once…" Sakura whispered. No one heard her, alone as she was in the hallway.

She had to know. She just had to make sure.

Inside of the apartment, the atmosphere was almost choking with relief. Kakashi stood over him, arms crossed dangerously. He wasn't leaning on either foot and he seemed to loom over his most surprising student. It was all an act though. Her teacher lacked that oppressive edge he'd displayed only minutes earlier. She heard structured noise in the air and assumed that the man was asking questions. She wasn't really listening.

Sasuke stood on the other side, leaning against the refrigerator. A smirk was plastered on his face and it almost seemed as though he was making fun of his friend's predicament. She could almost hear the question on the tip of his tongue: 'What have you gotten into this time, dead last?'

Naruto sat on floor, his legs crossed with his hand buried into the tangled nest of blond roots attached to his scalp. His face was scrunched up in a practiced manner, and she couldn't tell if his eyes were closed or if he was merely squinting. Either way, he didn't react to her entrance. He was wearing that orange getup of his with his forehead protector tied securely around his forehead. His equipment pouches were attached around his waist and thigh and seemed fully stocked. He looked ready.

She watched him carefully, trying to discern some clue, some flaw that would unmask it, and kept her silence until she could no longer restrain herself.

"Are you the real one?"

Silence. She ignored the other two. She had to know.

The wrinkles on his face smoothed out and his eyelids moved out of the way. He looked to her. He looked away.

He shook his head. It reminded her of the way he'd looked back at the Academy, when Hokage-sama came to their class and scolded him in front of everybody. She remembered, because it was the only time she'd ever seen him show regret. She remembered… that everyone had laughed and cheered, because it meant that his disruptive behavior would come to an end. Naruto hadn't said a word, but she remembered a look in his eyes, and the tension in his shoulders.

The next day he'd started up again, worse than before. Everyone waited for him, but Hokage-sama never came to scold Naruto again.

She controlled her breathing consciously now. "Do you know where he is?"

She saw Kakashi hold his hand up, to stop Sasuke from speaking up. The clone took the opportunity to climb to his feet and silently pointed towards the door. She moved out of the way as it softly closed the front door, and followed it as it stepped inside the bedroom.

There he was, stretched out on his mattress.

'He looks ill,' she thought.

He wore a pair of blood stained pajamas, torn and shredded along one side. The skin revealed by the damaged garment seemed perfectly healthy, but she couldn't say the same about the body as a whole. His tan seemed a few shades lighter than his counterpart's, and the sweat that permeated his skin and clothing glistened as it encountered the morning light. His hair drooped lifelessly and stuck to his forehead, like wet grass stomped into the ground. Beneath his eyelids, his eyes were motionless.

The clone looked at her worryingly, with his right hand holding onto Naruto's forearm.

"He won't wake up."

* * *

P.S.

By the way, you guys really shouldn't get used to the update schedule I've used up to this point. Those of you who have read my other works know that I am a notoriously slow writer, and I haven't gotten any faster over the years. I've pretty much used up my stockpile of pre-written material, so you should expect a return to norm soon.

Also, I'd like to take this opportunity to thank all those who reviewed. Sometimes it seems that the only reason I keep writing these things is to watch that little number get bigger. I mean, I'm not getting any money from this, and I put a lot of effort into it, especially since I'm my own editor.

But that's enough complaining from me. Thanks for taking the time to tell me what you think. If I've gotten any better at this, it's thanks to you, the reviewers. I guess I should give a shout-out to everyone over at the Fanfiction Forum too. They've certainly helped, at least when we aren't arguing enough to derail the thread.


	4. The Doppelgängers

This is the last of my prewritten chapters. I would have posted it earlier, but I had other things to do these past few weeks. I know a lot of you are confused, but this chapter should clarify quite a few things. After all, this is an adventure, not a mystery. Hopefully, after reading this chapter, you'll start to realize what the adventure is.

And before you ask, yes, this chapter takes place immediately before the prologue.

By the way, in case you're interested, I remembered what inspired me to start writing this fic, all those months ago. Right where it belongs, by _Nine Inch Nails_. Enjoy.

* * *

_Chapter three_

_Tick. Tick. Tick. _

The bed was comfortable.

_Tick_. _Tick_. _Tick._

The ceiling was dull, devoid of substance.

_Tick_. _Tick_. _Tick._

Her head was filled with nothing… but the repetitive ticking of her clock.

_Tick_. _Tick_. _Tick._

She blinked.

_Tick_. _Tick_. _Tick_. _Tick_. _Tick_. _Tick_.

A weary sigh escaped her throat.

_Tick_. _Tick_. _Tick_…

Sakura sat up, pulling both her knees to her chest and wrapping her arms around them, trying to hold every piece of herself close.

'Looks I'm staying awake, tonight.'

She smiled. "Haven't you got enough sleep, Naruto? You've got to take mine away, too? So greedy…"

It was funny. She laughed bitterly.

Her eyes surveyed her surroundings carefully, like they somehow expected to find something they hadn't seen every day for years. Her room looked different at… at…

She sought out the clock that had occupied her mind and noted the position of the silver-plated hands. They gleamed brilliantly amid the shadows and branded the hour into her mind.

…two in the morning. The moon's glow passed through her bedroom window and liberally stained her belongings with its achromatic pallor. The teddy bear she'd gotten for her sixth birthday lost something in translation. The glitter sprinkled on the bow that surrounded its neck did not sparkle under the moonlight. The furry toy rested upright on her dresser and its beady eyes seemingly looked upon her form with contempt.

She almost felt like she'd entered another world, a world where garish goliaths entered comas and nobody could figure out what was wrong with them.

Sakura buried her face into her arms and held herself tighter, in an attempt at ignoring the monochrome world that surrounded her, filled as it was with objects that were as foreign to her as the moon above. She succeeded somewhat, and was left alone with her thoughts.

Three days.

He'd been in the Hokage's care for three days now.

The same woman that managed to cure one teammate's affliction in seconds, couldn't even tell them what was wrong with the other. It was almost suspicious in its terrifying bleakness, as if there was a conspiracy against a poor orphan child and all the doctors were in on it.

But then she remembered watching the beautiful blond woman struggle over her unconscious patient, barking orders left and right in such a way that left no avenue for disobedience or even debate, and the thought died a quick death.

"What am I supposed to do?" she whispered, simply to hear the sound of her own voice. It was awfully quiet at two in the morning. The stillness bothered her.

"It depends on what you want, Sakura-chan. I'll leave it all in your hands."

Her heart stopped. She wasn't expecting to hear an answer.

He was sitting on her desk, amidst her cosmetics and skincare products, like it was his favorite seat. He wore his usual outfit, but the colors were grayed out underneath the moonlight and she found herself glossing over them quickly. His skin tone appeared much paler than usual, creating greater contrast with the strange black markings etched on his cheeks. Three lines on each side, bearing some similarity to whiskers. She found herself staring at them for a long moment, as if she was seeing them for the first time. They looked different, almost symbolic under this light. She shifted her perspective, taking a step back to look at the bigger picture.

He looked tired. Not sleepy… just tired. It was all in the detail, playing out in the corner of his eyes, the sag in his shoulders, the curve of his posture. He looked quiet, beaten. It was all wrong. Naruto, of all the people she knew, should never look like _that_.

Still, there was the bigger question of what he was doing in her room in the middle of the night while his real body was in a coma.

She quickly pulled her sheets up to cover herself. "What are you doing here?" she hissed, fully conscious of the situation. It may only be a clone, smoke and shadows bent to a shape and a will, but there was still a boy in her room after dark.

Naruto's clone smiled. It was a wee thing, overwhelmed with weariness and something unidentifiable. "I came to see you, Sakura-chan," he whispered, the volume of his voice lower than she could ever remember hearing it.

If there was one aspect of Naruto's personality that annoyed her above all others, it was his penchant for taking things literally. It sometimes made conversations with him tedious, like he was constantly trying to catch up with the train of thought. "I can see that. Weren't you supposed to help Hokage-sama?"

His eyes unfocused and he tilted his head, seeming lost in thought. "He probably did, might even still be there, but if he is he won't last much longer. We all have to go back, sooner or later."

Her brow tightened. "What? You're a different clone? How many of you are out there?"

"Dunno," he said, shrugging his shoulders in indifference.

That didn't sound good. "Can't you guess?"

He obliged her and thought about it. "Three hundred, at least," he estimated.

"Three hun–!" That was ridiculous. How could someone in a coma possibly have so many clones running around?

Naruto shook his hand, as if to shake the topic away. "Listen, Sakura-chan. I don't have much time left, so I want to make it count."

Sakura blinked repeatedly. "I don't understand."

The clone grinned weakly. "I'm just a clone, Sakura-chan. I can't make chakra, but I still need chakra to live. I've been 'alive' for a few days now, and every second steals it away from me. I'm out of time. I'm going back, no matter what I do, so I want to do the right thing before I have to leave. So you'll remember me. Maybe at the end I won't make it out alive… but maybe that's the way it was supposed to be all along." This last admission came out with some difficulty, and it was clear that he didn't really believe what he was saying.

"But…" She was at a loss for words. How could she make him understand what she needed to hear? A sense of urgency began to assault her senses, as though there were only a few grains remaining in the hourglass of opportunity.

"_Where_ are you going?"

"The source. The Original. The one who owns the name Naruto. The one who is me, but isn't. The most important **me**." The clone sighed. "Sakura-chan, I... he… Naruto needs your help."

"What?" She couldn't believe it. She leaned closer to him, to make sure the distance between them wasn't twisting his words into something crazy. "You know what the problem is?"

It grimaced. "Yeah, we all do. We always have."

That revelation wasn't going down easily. Its girth surpassed the width of her tolerance, and became affixed to the piping. The pressure built up nigh instantly, and she exploded, just barely managing to keep her voice down. "Why the hell didn't you say anything before now?"

The clone smiled ruefully. "We're just clones. We're not really alive, but we don't want to die either. Really, we're nothing but failures. All of us."

Something she saw in him, in his posture, his expression, his eyes, brought her to a pause.

It seemed to exude guilt.

A horrifying thought crept out from the crevices of her mind and clutched at her heart with a strong, freezing grip.

'No… It can't be.'

The clone's head bowed down, and it proceeded to confirm her fears.

"It's our fault," it admitted. "It's our fault he's like this. The Original… he's fighting us on the inside. We're eating him, Sakura-chan."

In the midst of her horrified realization, her teammate's body double slid off of her desktop and wobbled over to the window, taking short hesitant footsteps. He looked fragile, weak. Still, he managed to reach his destination without too much trouble, and leaned against the windowsill, gasping for breath.

"Yeah… time's up." He looked up to the ceiling, looking as though he was sending a prayer to whatever god would listen. It was odd to see. She'd never seen Naruto do such a thing.

He turned towards her, pointing those blue eyes of his straight into her heart. "Sakura-chan, I need to see baa-chan, but I can't make it there on my own. Help me reach her. Please."

It wasn't the first time she'd heard him plead, but, just this once, she could not even think of refusing. "Turn around, I need to get changed."

* * *

They hobbled down the deserted street of her residential neighborhood side by side, making slow progress down the concrete path. Everything was quiet and still, or perhaps just well hidden. At this time of night, only ninja would dare prowl, and even under the light reflected off the moon, none showed themselves to her senses. As far as she could tell, they were on their own.

Its left arm was draped around her shoulders like an orange scarf as she held onto its waist. The experience was unsettling. In all this time she'd never been so close to one of Naruto's clones. She must have been carrying over half its weight, but she wasn't feeling it at all.

She remembered having to carry both of her teammates during the chuunin exams, after Orochimaru's attack. Though Naruto was shorter than Sasuke, she clearly recalled feeling as though he weighed more, and at the time his skin had radiated heat like a furnace. However, this copy felt like ash in a man shaped balloon. It felt like it would float away like a feather if the wind picked up, and its skin felt like ice. Its movements were more awkward now, jerky and stiff, like rusty hinges on an old door. It felt like it would just break apart if she let it drop from her grasp.

Anxiety fluctuated and struck her mind in waves. 'What if it can't make it… what will I tell Hokage-sama? Will she believe me? Will she even listen to what I have to say?' she wondered. Sakura didn't think so. Why would the Hokage listen to a genin when she didn't have any proof, or really any idea what was going on?

At her side, it shifted in her grasp and spoke nervously. "Sakura-chan, don't stab me with that, okay? I'm not ready to go yet."

Her eyes narrowed. So it noticed, did it? Its situational awareness was greater than she'd expected. "Well, what did you expect me to do? You're killing my teammate." Still, she pulled the knife away from its waist.

The clone sighed in relief. "Yeah… b-but that doesn't mean I would do the same to you! None of us would ever try to hurt you, Sakura-chan. That's why… that's why it's gotta be you."

Blue eyes glistened and gleamed like precious stones in a pool of white sap, but failed to move her. Their owner had been using them on her for years with such frequency that she had long since been rendered immune. So, instead of paying them any undue attention, she kept her eyes on the road and pulled the clone onwards.

"What do you mean by that? What can I do? Why are you doing this in the first place?"

It kept its silence for a few seconds, and when it began to speak it did so hesitantly, like it was letting go of a dearly beloved secret. "Sakura-chan… what… what's the difference between him and me? We have the same memories, the same attitude, the same body, the same name, the same heart…" Its hand clutched at the fabric of its signature orange jacket, right over the heart.

"I'm real too! So why? Why do I have to be the one to disappear? Why can't I be the one that makes new memories?"

Its voice sounded desperate, despairing. The sound was absolutely alien to her ears. The distinction between Naruto and this pale imitation had never been so clean-cut, so total. Naruto never despaired no matter what stood against him. Naruto never lost hope.

Sakura felt her features twist into a truly awful expression, the facial muscles contracting to the point of discomfort, creating a frown, a snarl born of outrage and disgust.

'This thing isn't Naruto,' she realized.

This usurper was nothing like him. Nothing at all. In that moment she wanted nothing more than for this fake to stop sullying her teammate's body. She wanted to break it apart, to bring the disappearance it so feared so that it would never again show itself before her eyes, never again attempt such defilement. She felt no pity for the shade, the doppelgänger. This thing was killing her teammate. This thing wanted to take his rightful place.

But she could not let such a thing happen. A shadow should never try to stand before the sun. And in the end, this thing was not Naruto. It just wore his skin.

The clone was not finished. "Sakura-chan," it began to say, only to be interrupted when she dug her fingers into its waist.

"Don't call me that," she told it, like a master tells his apprentice, like a master tells his dog. "You're not him."

It jerked back, surprise and dismay playing across familiar features, but slowly began to bow its head down in acceptance. "Sorry," it whispered.

She doubled their pace. The clone struggled to match it, but did not complain.

* * *

Some things never changed, like the rise and fall of the sun.

Her eyelids were on the losing side of a tug-of-war, and only her rationality kept them from slipping past the point of no return, picking up the rope and pulling with a brief application of her titanic strength to reset the sides. But even it was starting to flounder, even it was starting to fall under the weight of so many desperate hours.

She was starting to lose her mind, she was sure of it. There couldn't be any other explanation, not when Jiraiya was starting to make sense.

"Tsunade, listen to me! You're not helping anyone like this, not the boy and especially not yourself. You need to go to bed and get some sleep."

Worry stained his voice, giving it character, strength, persuasiveness that he never wielded in his youth. But, it was also tarnished with hard earned wisdom, stained with the pain of a long life.

'You sound old, Jiraiya.'

His stare was bolstered by this sapience, pulling his every facial muscle into the expression and creating a frown that would have her compliance. The gaps left behind made him look as wizened as his voice. She looked down at his hands gripping the back of a chair and noted the wrinkles, calluses and scars that marked the passage of Time.

'You are old.'

Automatically, her eyes followed the path to the side of the bed, where a younger, smaller hand with unmarred skin lay cradled in her grasp. The hands that surrounded it, the ones that belonged to her, appeared supple and soft, and even felt like it, but she knew that what lurked beneath the surface differed mightily.

'We are old.'

Some things never changed, and thus became predictable. She knew what manner of dreams waited for her consciousness to lapse, hiding inside the cracks of her mind, lurking within the faults and fractures. Their victory was unavoidable and their ruthlessness was legendary. After all, she was living a nightmare, so it only made sense that monsters would drag her into their home and do their worst where they were most comfortable.

Right now, consciousness was a branch that she could hold onto against the pull of terror. To let go would be to fall beneath the waves into the most terrible depths of her psyche.

On any other day she would find an ally in the bottom of a glass, but now she was needed. Her faculties were precious, coveted and revered throughout the continent. She could not afford to dull them now.

She shook her head, and watched Jiraiya's face fall with a well-practiced sense of impassiveness. She couldn't afford sleep. Especially when she wasn't going to get any rest.

Tsunade turned her focus back to the child lying beneath the covers, fenced in by complex seals that glowed eerily under the moonlight, tinting everything in their periphery in soft eldritch glow. The fingers of her left hand moved to comb through his stiff, dry hair, gently massaging the scalp in hopes of a reaction.

"Naruto… I won't let you down," she whispered to him. "I'm here for you. I will not fail, not this time. I'll save you. I promise."

For a second, she thought she saw some eye movement under the cover of his eyelids, but she realized that this was probably wishful thinking.

Some things never changed.

This wouldn't be one of them.

"What do we know?"

She heard his sigh, but Jiraiya didn't choose to press the issue.

"Nothing," he replied. "We checked everything there was to check and came out of it with nothing. No wounds that we could find, physical or otherwise. No lacerations, no bruising, no poisons and no traces of foreign chakra. No sign of any kind of trauma. The wounds he received were healed before he was brought here. There just isn't anything keeping him under."

Of course, Tsunade already knew this. She just wanted to get her facts together, in the hopes of uncovering an obscure clue.

"What about…" she trailed off, holding half her sentence back. Speaking that name where its owner might be able to hear felt wrong, somehow.

"Checked that too. That chakra is well within the documented levels. The seal's holding. It's not… that," he affirmed.

"What about Shizune?"

"Nothing on that end. You read the report. If there was something odd about that kage bunshin then she couldn't find it. Not with so little time."

Tsunade held back the urge to sigh and began to slide her thumb against Naruto's cheek, passing over his unique birthmarks along the way and immediately lost interest in her predictable conversation with Jiraiya. It was the first time she'd ever touched them and she had expected them to feel differently, like scars. Instead, they felt exactly like normal skin. If she closed her eyes, she wouldn't even know they were there. How odd.

Jiraiya brought her back to the ground like weighted shackles on an albatross.

"Come on, Tsunade."

He didn't say anything more, he didn't need to. He just placed his hand on her shoulder, and it felt like ultimate judgment had passed, like an ancient sage had stripped her of her excuses to stare obscenely at the naked truth. She felt the urge to cover up, but she was fatigued, listless like a broken animal… weighed down by the knowledge that she was only going through the motions to delay the inevitable, that she had no real chance to grasp at victory.

"Will you watch him?"

His hand gently squeezed her shoulder. "Every second."

She snorted, but didn't refute his words. She stared at Naruto for a long moment, taking in his slack expression before focusing on the steady rise and fall of his chest.

'You're alive. You're not dead.'

If she was lucky… No. She wouldn't rely on luck. Not for this.

Tomorrow, she would go over every stitch of documentation left behind by her two predecessors concerning Naruto and his prisoner. There was an entire room full of that stuff, raw data that was almost completely useless. To extract useful information out of that would probably take weeks, but she no longer had a choice. There was nothing else to do.

"Alright. Have it your way."

She brought her hand back from the boy's cheek, but hung on to his hand for a moment longer. "If something happens…"

"You'll be the first to know," he assured.

Nodding regretfully, Tsunade climbed to her feet and turned to move out of the room, but stopped in mid-motion. There was something…

"Is something wrong?"

She shook her head. "I don't know. I just… had a feeling." She turned to look at Jiraiya and found him staring back silently. A moment wobbled by, stuffed to the brim by unfulfilled anticipation.

Visibly tired of the silence, Jiraiya opened his mouth to speak but was almost immediately interrupted by the sound of strong, urgent knocking.

As she walked towards the door and passed by Jiraiya's disgruntled expression, Tsunade was blindsided and manhandled by humor, which pushed and wrestled her expression into a wry smile.

Some things never changed. But she had to admit, Jiraiya's awful timing was one the more amusing constants in her life.

* * *

It was undignified and immature, but she kept at it anyway, because it was terribly effective.

Sakura could feel its borrowed eyes lingering on her from the other side of the room, silently beckoning her to turn to it, to acknowledge its existence. It begged through its eyes with the desperation of a dying man, as though its very survival depended on her attention. Unfortunately for the clone, if it had been hanging from a ledge above a ravine and she had been the only person capable of pulling it to safety, then it might as well have resigned itself to its fate and saved itself the struggle. If it had to count on her to save it, then it was certainly going to plummet until its frail body impacted the jagged rocks below.

She pitilessly ignored it with every fiber of her being, with her arms crossed tightly against her chest and her eyes fixed on the waiting room wall, cataloging the cracks in the paint.

Naruto was as transparent as a pane of glass. For a ninja, he was painfully easy to read. He put his heart on every morning, treating it like his forehead protector and displaying it for the entire world to see, as though it was protection instead of a weakness. Sometimes, she wondered why he even bothered trying to become a shinobi.

She, along with most everyone else in their class, had figured it out a long time ago. Nothing hurt Naruto more than ignoring him. If you insulted him, he would either fire back or shrug it off. If you hit him, he would complain, violently or verbally, but either way he would forget all about it in no time. But if you ignored him, it would drive him insane. He hated being ignored or overlooked more than anything in the world, it got under his skin like nothing else. It was unmistakable, completely obvious.

Luckily for her, Naruto's clones looked, walked and talked like him without actually being him. The silent treatment was almost certainly driving it mad, but it kept its distance, the reasons for which were still unclear to her, but were probably related to fatigue or shame. Naruto would have been knee-deep in her personal space right about now, but then, this wasn't Naruto.

'This isn't Naruto. It looks like him, but it's not.'

Sakura kept repeating this thought in her mind, forcing herself not to forget it. If she let herself be fooled, then one of those copies just might wind up replacing him, and falsehoods should never be allowed to replace the truth.

It wasn't Naruto. It was just a lie given form.

The green glow surrounding the inquisitive hands faded and disappeared, and the beautiful Hokage opened her eyes. "You're almost out of chakra," she remarked. "I'm surprised you lasted this long."

The clone raised its head towards the sky, as though to thank the mercy of a god. "I'm glad I managed to make it here before I died."

It was such a wretched creature, but she couldn't quite bring herself to pity it. The anger was boiling deep in the recesses of her heart for the desecration it had allowed voice, so she sat silently on her side of the room, contributing nothing to the conversation as the two Sannin observed the flawed clone.

The Hokage stared it down. "You won't die."

"Yes I will."

The cold certainty in its voice was chilling, but the Hokage weathered it without a shiver. She placed her hands onto the clone's shoulders and looked directly into its eyes. "You won't. I'll save you Naruto, I promise."

'That thing isn't Naruto!' As that thought blazed its way through her mind, she tried to muster up the courage to speak up in front of the village leader. But before she could break through barriers of etiquette, she found that she didn't have to.

The copy closed its eyes, as though it couldn't bear to see the Hokage's earnest face anymore. "Maybe you really will save him," it whispered. "But that's not me anymore. I get that now. No one can save me, and to save myself, I'd have to…"

"Have to what? Tell me," Tsunade implored it.

"I'd have to become a monster."

Such an admission was surprising, and the Hokage looked just as surprised as Sakura felt. In the midst of the stunned silence, the other man in the room approached them with his hands in his pockets.

"Something tells me you're about to say something we're not going to want to hear."

The clone turned to face the mature man, smiling fondly. "Ero-sennin…" It stopped in mid-sentence, quickly and shamefully bowing its borrowed head. "Sorry. I shouldn't call you that, Jiraiya."

The Sannin froze in his tracks, visibly unable to believe the words he was hearing. "Naruto?"

It grimaced. "That's his nickname for you, and I'm not him. I have all of his memories, but there's something… missing inside of me. Something important. At first, I couldn't tell the difference at all, but as time went on it became…"

It drifted off, showing a twisted expression and shook its head wildly, just like Naruto did when he was failing to come up with a good idea. "I don't know how to explain it. It's like… dawn without the sun. I keep waiting for it to come up, so that the day can begin, but it never does and it's only gotten darker and colder since then. Everything's dying. Everything's rotting. It hurts to go on. I can't… I can't smile anymore. I don't remember how."

Its face twisted in a grimace, and it took her a while to realize that it was trying to pull off Naruto's sunshine smile. Its effort subsided and its expression finally did settle into a smile, but it was far from sunlight. At best, it was a candle in a windy room, and in a few seconds even that tiny flame was snuffed out by the gales of its depression.

Standing tall in the middle of the room, the toad sage Jiraiya rubbed at his chin absentmindedly. "How much time?"

The clone scrunched its eyebrows and formed a familiar expression of confusion. "What?"

"You said: 'as time went on'. How much time are we talking about here?"

"I don't know… I was born during the chuunin exam finals. Hyuuga Neji was the one who dispelled me."

"…Wait a second here," Jiraiya said. "Putting your date of birth aside for now, how can you even tell?"

The clone slowly shook its head. "I don't understand."

"How do you know that? How do you know when 'you' were dispelled?"

It shrugged. "I don't know. It's a memory, I guess?" it answered confusedly.

Jiraiya grimaced and began to rub at his temple. "Wait a second here… you're not telling me… that's not possible is it?" he muttered.

"Jiraiya, what is it?" the Hokage asked.

Jiraiya wiped his face with his palm, from top to bottom. "This guy's memories didn't merge back with Naruto's after he was dispelled. They remained separate. It's the only way he'd be able to tell when he was destroyed."

She immediately turned to stare at the clone, and something in her eyes seemed to change, becoming sharper so as to cut through layers of fatty tissue to reach the artery. "Do you think it's an isolated case, or something more?"

Jiraiya walked over to room's edge and grabbed one of the cushioned seats, dragging it behind him until he reached them. He sat down on the edge of the seat leaning forwards, and something about their group's proximity made her feel like an outsider as she watched them from her side of the room.

After a few moments of heavy thought, the legendary ninja shook his head. "No… this explains everything. Think about it. How many kage bunshin has Naruto created since he learned the technique? With the amount of chakra he has at his disposal and the lack of suitable alternatives, he must have used the technique at every opportunity, without any real limit. He must have created thousands upon thousands of clones by now! And if none of them ever really disappear… if they all wind up considering themselves to be different from the original, then they just might—"

"Good," the clone interrupted, drawing all eyes towards it. It smiled like flickering candlelight again. "Looks like you've got it. Maybe you've got what it takes to save him after all. Save him from us, from suicide."

Its baby blue eyes turned to her, and she quickly looked away.

"Sakura…"

She felt nervous for some reason. Her hands fell to her lap and fretfully clutched at the skirt and she stuttered just a tiny bit as she answered, "What?"

"Sorry I wasn't good enough. I… didn't want it to end like this."

Sakura didn't know what to do. She was supposed to be angry at it, but genuine remorse had a way of dousing righteous anger. The clone had apologized for the wrong thing but it had admitted its wrongdoing. It had told the truth.

She didn't know what to say, so she simply stuck to the plan. She didn't answer, she didn't move… she didn't even look its way.

A long moment later, the toad sage felt the need to fill the silence. "What's going to happen to you?"

The clone stared at her for a moment longer before answering. "I'll go back to the Cradle. I probably won't be able to make it out again." It leaned back into his seat and stared at the ground, smiling wryly.

"Naruto's strong you know, stronger than me and my 'brothers'. If we fought together, we could probably take him down, but the Hokage's hat only accepts one. So my brothers fight, kill and eat one another for the power to stand against him, to kill him, eat him and become him. It's disgusting…" The volume of its voice began to dim as it talked, even as its intensity bubbled and overflowed.

"I didn't want to live like that. So, I ran and I'll keep running until they catch up to me, to kill me and eat the memories I hold dear, the memories that make me who I am, that make _me_ different from **me**, all so that they can become a tiny bit stronger, a tiny bit closer to their goal. They call themselves Naruto, but they aren't him either! They have even less right to that name than me! They've become twisted, savage killers! No better than devils and ogre, they're just monst—"

Suddenly, it began to wheeze and gasp for air. "I can't…" A thick, dry cough sent out a large cloud of white smoke into the air, like its mouth was the exhaust to a steam engine. The Hokage moved to assist it, but was almost violently waved off. The clone continued on its final sprint without missing a step, every word spitting out clouds of smoke into the air.

"To save Naruto, you'll have to find him. He's strong, but he's all alone in there, and I don't know how much longer he can last."

Thin lines of smoke like fumes from sticks of incense began to escape from all of its orifices, its mouth, ears and nostrils, even its tear ducts. With fibrils of smoke caressing the contours of its face as they rose for the sky, the clone looked like it was burning from the inside out.

The image sent her heart into palpitations. This thing wasn't Naruto, but it certainly looked like him. The image of its suffering was what nightmares were made of, and she had the feeling that they would come visit her bed more often over the next few nights.

Jiraiya spoke up, showing poise and calm in a situation that had her feeling like fish out of water. "How long do we have?"

The clone, with its teeth grit and its muscled tensed and immobile, wheezed out, "I told you, I don't know. Time goes by differently in there. I've been out here for a few days now, but it's probably been close to half a year for them. All I know, is that he probably doesn't have much time left. And neither do I."

The man frowned. "Five to six months then? If you've been out here since Naruto was found, then that's three days. Three days for six months… so every minute out here is an hour in there?"

The clone slowly shook its head and relaxed its tensed muscles, or maybe it just didn't have the energy to hold on anymore and was forced into letting go. "I can't… stay… any longer," it whispered. "Be careful… who you send. It's dangerous in… Naruto's head…might not get in…might not get out. Depends… how much he likes 'em."

With that final clue, it smiled its last candlelight smile and swiftly began to dissolve into a shapeless cloud of particles, releasing thick plumes of smoke from its every pore until its entire body was engulfed by the cloud.

"Good luck."

His blue eyes were the last things to disappear, and they stayed fixed on her until the very end.

* * *

The next hour was a frazzling whirlwind of activity as the Hokage used the full breadth of her authority to call upon the best and brightest of her ninja. At her command, a dozen men and women wearing full body cloaks and concealing porcelain masks disappeared into the night, and within minutes began to reappear, escorting one or two ninja of varying age and rank into the depths of the hospital.

None of them were familiar to a genin like her, but every one of them seemed competent and disciplined, as evidenced by their response time and the lack of fatigue they exhibited as they crowded around a low table, despite the late hour. The toad sage Jiraiya was at the center of that table, speaking to the attentive ninja as he inked out designs on a large scroll. His voice was clearly audible from where she was sitting and described procedures that were probably very interesting, but she had other things to think about; a self-destructive teammate to worry about, so she paid very little attention to the briefing. Her focus was almost completely introverted as she fruitlessly sank all of her concentration in an attempt to dissect the words and actions of that flawed copy.

Naruto was the worst liar she knew, but there no guarantee that such a broken clone would also be incapable of speaking lies. So she went over every twitch of its fake body and every murmur that had escaped its mouth, using the skills that had been taught to her to check for untruths. Or at least, that's what she told herself.

Honestly, she was just wasting time, trying desperately not to believe in its prophecy. She already knew it was telling the truth, because two of the legendary Sannin had also listened to that story and immediately began to act upon the information it had provided. There was no better endorsement than that.

Still, she went over her recent memories with a fine tooth comb, just to avoid thinking about other, more important things, things she couldn't do anything about, so that she wouldn't have to feel helplessness on top of such distress.

She kept busy, because it was what she had been taught to do in order to deal with grief. Naruto wasn't dead, but it didn't look like he was going to wake up anytime soon, if ever. As his teammate, she knew better than anyone just how much he liked to use that technique.

'He's probably made one clone for every man, woman and child in Konoha… probably more. Tch… what have you gotten yourself into?'

She didn't know how it was supposed to work, but if the inside of his head was anything like the real world, just how was he supposed to fight against so many enemies on his own? Especially when they all had his abilities, his training, his strength, his speed… all of his memories to use against him.

And if the clone had been telling the truth, then it's been going on for so long that it was beyond her understanding! Team 7 was created almost a year ago, and Naruto once told her that he learned kage bunshin just before the team was put together. If three days converted to six months then Naruto's earliest clones should have experienced close to 61 years of existence! Even if they didn't learn anything new, they still had **six decades** to master what they had learned, which gave them about 74 years of experience.

The Sandaime Hokage had been 68 years of age at his death, and he had been one of the oldest shinobi in the village. Naruto was only thirteen! How was he supposed to fight against that?

He couldn't. He shouldn't. His only option was to hide, but how long could that last? With so many eyes to avoid, how long could he run?

Even if he was still alive, when every minute out here was an hour in there, how much time they did really have to save him?

'Is it already too late? No… it can't be. It just can't.'

She couldn't stand thinking about how low their chances really were. So she kept busy. So busy that she barely even looked when the door to the waiting room opened, allowing a fuzzy blob that she barely distinguished as an ANBU to lead another fuzzy blob into the room.

Oddly enough, that blob began to walk directly towards her. When she realized that it wasn't stopping, she looked up and met the eyes of a familiar figure.

Her ex-best friend. Yamanaka Ino.

'Short hair doesn't suit you, Ino-pig.'

The loss of her long hair was possibly the most significant injury of their match during the third round preliminaries at the chuunin exams, even if it was self-inflicted. Ever since then, Sakura was stricken by an irrational urge to apologize.

She didn't of course. An apology from a rival likely wouldn't be appreciated.

Ino appeared before her wearing articles of clothing that had never before graced her skin. Her clothes were obviously new, but utilitarian and easily disposable; a simple white shirt and blue shorts. Her hair was brushed but her face sported no makeup, giving her a more natural feel than usual, making her seem more businesslike.

'What are you doing here, Ino? Don't tell me that you were the only Yamanaka available.'

Ino's reason for being here was so obvious that it was unthinkable. The Yamanaka clan had one specialty, one claim to fame in the ninja world, and that was possession, mind-walking. Considering the nature of Naruto's… illness, it made sense that a member of the Yamanaka clan would be called upon to help. But Ino was a beginner in the ninja world; she was only capable of using the most basic of her clan's techniques. Naruto's ailment seemed so incredibly complex that it seemed almost impossible that Ino could do anything to help.

So really, she had to ask.

Their voices overlapped and melded together as they both started speaking.

"Ino?" / "Sakura? What are you doing here?"

They both stopped in their tracks, momentarily stunned by the odd spell of synchronization that took hold of them. The silence felt like the quiet after two competing rams slammed their heads together, like the momentary deafness that occurred in two heavyweight boxers just after they simultaneously landed heavy blows on one another.

Just as always, Ino was fractionally faster to react. She crossed her arms, insisting, "I asked you first! What's going on?"

Sakura knew better than to argue. If she wanted to get an answer out of Ino and not devolve this conversation into a shouting match, she would have to play by her rules. Besides, she wasn't in the mood to fight with Ino today.

And yet, in spite of her decision to go ahead and answer Ino's questions, Sakura found herself hesitating, biting her lower lip as she mulled over what to tell her.

"Well… did you hear what happened to Naruto?"

At those words, the aggressive tension that lined Ino's body dissipated. Her narrowed eyes widened, her stiff lips split open, her arms uncrossed… and just like that Ino the rival was replaced by Ino the friend.

"No… something happened to Naruto? Is he okay?"

Sakura's eyes fell onto her lap. "I don't know. He won't wake up."

"Oh." Ino's eyes quickly surveyed the room. "You're here alone? Is Sasuke-kun here?"

She shook her head and didn't elaborate. Truth was she hadn't seen Sasuke since they found Naruto's body.

"Hokage-sama has been personally handling Naruto's case but she couldn't find anything wrong with him. He just… sleeps all day."

There was silence between them as Ino walked half a step towards her, showing clear reluctance to keep going, like she was approaching a man-eating lion with its paw caught in a bear trap. Sakura felt a bitter needle stab her heart.

'I guess years of bitter rivalry aren't so easy to overcome.'

Once upon a time, this beautiful, vibrant girl had pulled her from the abyss of self-doubt and failure… no, it was more than that. Ino had taught her how to pull herself from that pit of depression, and Sakura would never forget it. That's why she brought out the fondest feelings out of her heart and showed her a smile made of softness and traces of regret. To show that it was okay, that she didn't have to hold her hand anymore. To show her that she was strong.

"Well, I'm sure he'll wake up soon. It's been three days already. Not even Naruto can sleep that long."

Ino looked into her eyes and saw something that made her wavering expression coagulate and her hesitation dissipate. She then crossed the remaining distance in easy strides and plunked herself down on the seat beside hers.

"Well don't worry then! They dragged my Dad out of bed for this, and he'll definitely have no problem pulling Naruto's lazy butt back to the waking world!"

Sakura barely resisted the mad urge to giggle inanely. A subtle pressure touched the back of her eyes and she realized that she was getting ready to cry.

Immediately, she put everything she had into making sure that didn't happen. On some level, she and Ino would always be friends, but that didn't mean that she would allow herself to fall apart in front of her, even if she knew Ino would comfort her, or perhaps even because of it.

"It's not that easy, Ino."

"Reeeally? So, what are you not telling me?"

Sakura looked away and decided not to bother with subterfuge. "I don't know if I'm allowed to tell you."

"Oh, come on Sakura. How bad can it be?"

The lights flickered, plunging the building in intermittent darkness, like it was inside a giant blinking eye.

Complete silence engulfed them all, as they stared at the ceiling lights.

Under normal circumstances, power fluctuations wouldn't be too alarming, except for the fact that they were inside a hospital. Several redundancies were built into the system to make sure that this type of thing didn't happen, under any circumstances.

The lights simply should not have flickered.

A whisper crept out of Ino's lips. "…What just happened?"

The lights cut out. None of them screamed. They were ninja, after all. The darkness should hold no secrets from them.

However, these shadows held none of the comforts of a hiding place. It felt more like a blindfold had been pulled over her eyes to deny her the instrument of sight, forcing her to experience the symphony of life using only her remaining senses.

Her nose told her that she was in a building that had been recently cleaned with a liberal dose of lemon scented cleaner.

Her ears told her that she was alone, but she recalled that there were over a dozen people in the room with her when the lights went out. Either they weren't moving or they were all amazingly talented at moving silently, even without any noise to mask the sound of movement.

Her tongue told her that she was dehydrated, and that she should get something to drink.

Her skin told her that she was cold, that the temperature had been dropping steadily for several seconds, to the point where she was beginning to worry. Goosebumps broke out on her arms and called for attention, and she rubbed them absentmindedly as she slowly came to the conclusion that she was under a jutsu. She brought her hands into the proper hand sign and molded her chakra.

_Kai!_

Nothing happened. Either the technique failed or there was nothing to dispel.

As Sakura prepared to try again, something deep inside of her, perhaps even the deepest part, was intruded upon.

Icy fingers of intent reached out and touched the core of her being, bringing frightful perspective, awareness of how fragile she really was, of how those cold fingers could form a fist to snuff her life out with only minimal effort. She felt so unbearably small beside that presence, like an ant beside a mountain that she dared not move, dared not scream lest she draw its ire.

Those fingers spent a second feeling her out, and she instinctively realized that it could not actually see her, before sending out raw meaning.

A message… like a whispering voice in her innermost ear…

_I'm not sure where you are or if you can hear this, so I think I'll just shout it out as loud as I can. This message is for the man that was just inside my head. Everyone else, please ignore this!_

_Now, I think remember you. You're Ino's father, right? I don't really understand how you got in here. I think Shikamaru explained it to me once, but I don't really remember what he said. _

_So yeah, what did you think you were doing? You were really creepy you know, creepier than ero-sennin in a brothel. I know you don't like me, so don't try to act like you're worried about me. Honesty is the best policy you know! If you lie to me, it makes it real hard for me to trust you, and the old man always said that I should never trust anyone who tells me to trust them. Aren't you a jounin? I thought you'd be a more convincing liar. Kakashi-sensei is a much better liar than you._

_I don't really know if you've ever tried to talk with people when you break inside their heads, so I guess I gotta be the one to point it out. It's really hard to lie to someone when you're inside their head. Really, really hard. And when I think about it, isn't that kind of impolite? I mean, the least you could do is say hello, right? You're acting like a regular thief, Mister Yamanaka._

_Well, Mister Thief, I don't know what you were trying to steal, but you're not welcome here, so don't try to come back. Next time you bust in here I won't save you, and you'll wander through the catacombs forever._

_Or maybe I'll let __**Him**__ get to you first. You've been in my head, Mister Yamanaka. Don't think I couldn't feel your true feelings. Normally, I would let it go, but this is a special case. _

_If you venture into the ogre's lair, expect to be eaten! _

_Stay out of my head and we'll get along fine_. _Bye bye, Mister Thief. For everyone else, sorry for the inconvenience! Naruto out~!_

When the odd avenue of communication came to an end, the fingers slipped away, retreating back to their mountainous source. Soon after, power returned to the hospital and its eager lamps immediately flooded its rooms with light.

She was quickly forced to squint as the sudden brightness burned her eyes, and by the time she could fully open them again, the room was emptied of all other occupants, save for Inoichi's daughter.

'What… just happened?'

Ino looked like a life-sized doll as she sat scrunched up into a tight ball, with her knees brushing her chin and her arms wrapped around herself like a blanket. The pallor of her skin would have alarmed anyone, but the intensity of her stare belied her body's condition.

"You know what Sakura?" Her voice croaked awkwardly out of her throat, accompanying plumes of white mist condensed by the cold.

Sakura blinked a few times and weakly shook her head, as her mind suffocated in a miasma of confusion.

"You don't have to tell me after all. I'm not sure I want to know."


	5. Rabbit hole

_Chapter four_

A peculiar scent tickled her nostrils, barely perceptible to her senses. Intrigued, Tsunade filled her lungs to the brim, hoping to imbibe the scent's flavor, but the aroma remained at the edge of her perception, to the point where she began to believe it a trick of the mind. She exhaled and proceeded to fill her lungs again, only to cough harshly as an acrid stench pierced through her mind and prodded her disgust.

She covered her nose and mouth with a swift hand, eyes watering as they snapped onto her patient.

'Is that... smoke?'

She had carried him herself from his room down into the bowels of the hospital, where a chamber had been specially prepared to monitor his condition, and set him down in the middle of the massive sealing array tattooed into the stone floor. The designs surrounded him on all sides and glowed in a soft blue light as they were fed and controlled by a half dozen medics.

Naruto lay there, unmoving still, stripped of his clothes save for a pair of boxers, his pale skin seeming to shine where it contrasted the ebony ink of Jiraiya's paintbrush. A white cloud of smoke leaked from his nostrils and mouth with a low hiss, making it look like he was burning from the inside out. The sight sent her heart into palpitations.

"Jiraiya!"

Her old teammate grunted, his eyes shut in concentration as the seals painted on his face pulsed light periodically, identical to the glow emerging from the floor. "It's fine. I think he's casting kage bunshin."

Tsunade kept her eyes on the white cloud as it expanded with every exhalation, and quickly realized that it wasn't rising as high as it should. Instead of climbing until it reached the ceiling, the bulk of the cloud simply hung above Naruto's head as though an invisible membrane prevented it from moving, like hot-air in a balloon.

Her eyes narrowed. "Wait…''

It was moving. The billowing cloud slowly inched its way forward in a way that was becoming increasingly obvious, and its destination was likewise unmistakable: Yamanaka Ino's unconscious body, lying some distance away.

Her father rushed forwards.

Yamanaka Inoichi cared for his daughter deeply, that was easy to see. And to be honest, Tsunade wholeheartedly approved of his devotion, it was just that the sheer girth of his insubordination precluded any attempt at choking it down.

That's why she didn't feel particularly guilt-ridden when she motioned for her ANBU to restrain him.

A pair of masked men emerged from the shadows and streaked across the room like phantoms, overtaking the blond man in a heartbeat. Inoichi was slammed against the stone floor with a hefty thump and began to vigorously thrash about, trying desperately to escape his captors.

Tsunade watched the spectacle with imperious eyes. "Remember your place, jounin," she reprimanded. "This is a delicate operation. Do not test my patience by presuming to disrupt our efforts."

Inoichi snarled. "That is my daughter over there! Who knows what that… that… boy is doing to her?"

Konohagakure's fifth Hokage narrowed her eyes as a twinge of irritation tugged at her heartstrings.

"Yamanaka Inoichi!" His name emerged from her lips with the full weight of her authority. "Watch your tone."

Her jounin twisted his back and strained his neck in order to look into her eyes, and as he opened his mouth to offer his rebuttal, she realized that she didn't really care to hear what he had to say.

Tsunade flexed her metaphysical muscles and simply crushed him under the weight of her power. His eyes opened wide as his breath escaped his chest, the desperate anger that could be seen burning in their center dimming considerably as moisture gathered on their surface, reflecting the dim glow of functioning seals.

Inoichi was a seasoned jounin, but she was kage, and he would obey.

His head bowed until his forehead touched stone. "Please! Hokage-sama, I beg you," he pleaded hoarsely. "She is my only daughter."

But Tsunade's heart was deafened to his pleas. "Ino is a proud kunoichi of our village. Have faith in her, if you cannot have faith in us." Turning to her ANBU, "Make sure he doesn't disrupt the proceedings. If he insists on making a nuisance of himself, escort him outside."

The pair acknowledged the orders she had given with a slight nod and were promptly forgotten as she turned her attention towards the center of the room, where the cloud had settled over Ino's body, churning silently and rolling into itself. The mass of smoke suddenly settled for a moment before compressing into a perfect white sphere the size of a melon, looking almost like a Hyuuga's eye.

Thin streams of coagulated smoke shot out of the sphere, extending like tentacles over to Ino's arms and torso, weaving around them in a way that strongly reminded her of a spider's web. She could hear rusting clothes, dull thumps and Inoichi's grunts of exertion coming from behind her as he struggled to free himself, but tuned it all out as she observed the phenomenon, utterly fascinated. The sphere quickly diminished in size as its web formed a fabric around the girl, until there was nothing left.

Tsunade's eyes narrowed as she watched the unconscious girl and the white cloth adorning her body. Its shape was intensely familiar.

"Is that...?" Jiraiya whispered.

Splotches of orange and blue appeared on the weave, at first faded, then vibrant as the colour quickly spread, wiping out all doubt. Only one person in the entire village wore a jacket like that one, and he was lying unconscious a few feet away.

The first thing to denote Ino's return to consciousness was a grimace, and Tsunade began to wonder if the Yamanaka clan's signature techniques were in any way painful. She watched her wiggle and groan for a moment and decided to shelve the thought for another time.

"Alright, that's enough," she said, motioning to the medics powering the seal. "Do a preliminary analysis of the girl's vital signs and bring her in for debriefing. I want a full report within an hour. Jiraiya, with me."

The toad sage snorted his disdain of authority, but obeyed, the glow of the seals decorating his face fading to black as his hands untangled from their symbolic arrangement, and he climbed to his feet.

"Hmph. You sure have gotten used that hat quickly, Princess."

Tsunade remained silent as she walked past Inoichi's prone body, the expression on his face reflecting his overpowering relief.

'You may be right.'

* * *

"Watchman, huh?"

Tsunade glanced at a her oldest friend as he idly skimmed over his copy of the report. "You don't believe it?"

He shook his head slowly, feigning distraction. "No, I wouldn't say that."

"What is it, then?" she asked. Her eyes stayed on the text but stilled their advance.

He took a moment's pause to gauge the feel of the landscape. "I'm just wondering... how much time we really have to spend on research," he advanced.

His tread was careful, but she was sensitive, excessively so, in light of recent events. She took her eyes of the scroll only to glare at him.

"Get to the point, Jiraiya. What do you want?"

He matched her heat with a steady gaze, cool and resolute. "I want to send in the girl."

"I'd appreciate it if you could be more specific."

"Naruto's teammate. The one with pink hair."

Tsunade blinked. "...Haruno? I fail to see what that would accomplish."

Jiraiya crossed his arms, and leaned back into his seat. "Inoichi's kid got a lot further in than he did."

"Again, I'm not seeing the connection."

He pushed on. "This Watchman isn't Naruto, but he's based on him, same as all the other clones," he affirmed, then sighed. "Sending Inoichi was a mistake. Even if we ignore any bad blood between them, there's no way Naruto would just let someone he doesn't know well roam around his head! Of course he'd try to stop him."

Tsunade barely held back a snort. "And you think he'll stand aside if Haruno asks nicely?"

"He likes her," he advanced.

"He likes Shizune too," she countered.

Jiraiya shook his head strongly. "Not like that! He wouldn't like it, but he'd fight Shizune if she tried to force it."

She shook her head in confusion. "And just what makes you think he wouldn't raise a hand against Haruno?"

Jiraiya snorted and rubbed at his forehead. "What was I thinking? Shouldn't have expected you to understand," he muttered.

It seemed as though he was about to drop the subject, but she wasn't about to let him off easy. Her copy of the report clapped against her desk with some force after leaving her hands, and she stared him down until he matched her gaze.

"Do you realize what's at stake here, Jiraiya? I'm not willing to gamble with his life!"

"And you think I am?" he asked, incredulous, almost insulted.

"Then tell me, what makes you so sure?" she demanded. "What makes you think you understand him any better than I do?"

The tells that revealed his irritation – the slight tilt of his eyes, the tension in the corner of his mouth – faded away, to be replaced by something she could not identify.

"_I've_ been in his position," he said, his dark eyes seeming to pin her to her seat with their intensity.

Her heart fluttered in her chest and disquiet numbed her tongue. Once upon a time she would have used those feelings against him. But then, once upon a time, he would have never admitted to such.

Maybe that's what helped convince her, in the end.

Because, when it all came down to it, she was scared. Scared of many things.

But not of him.

"Alright... I'll trust you."

She wasn't willing to gamble with Naruto's life, so she would trust in the Toad Sage's wisdom.

'I hope you know what you're doing, Jiraiya. For his sake.'

* * *

Somehow, the arcane symbols bleeding light into the air had a different feel to them up close. It was as if she could feel an expert seamstress tugging at the edges of her mind's tapestry, unraveling it thread by thread. The edge of her vision began to dim, but the effect receded quickly as soon it was noticed. It was almost like she was falling asleep, except that she was far too keyed up for that to be happening.

"Don't fight it," Ino warned. "We have to fall in at the same time, so I can lead you to our destination. We don't want to get separated and you're so inexperienced that you might end up trapped in his memories. So relax before you get to relive Naruto's most lurid fantasies of you."

The thought alone was enough to sour her expression.

"Yamanaka Ino, some decorum would be appreciated."

Her rival's pretty cheeks flushed red in embarrassment, but before she could truly enjoy the sight, the Hokage's stern eyes turned in her direction. Her breath caught as the woman focused the full weight of her attention upon her slight figure and seemed displeased.

"Haruno."

"Y-yes?"

The Hokage's expression shifted minutely, as if her tongue bathed in distasteful liquor.

"Before we can proceed, our seal master will need to inscribe certain precautions onto you, so as to avoid the very scenario Miss Yamanaka so thoughtfully described."

'Well... okay. I don't see what's so–'

Sakura then noticed a shadowy figure approaching from behind the Hokage. It was only then that she realized that everything outside the sealing circle was draped in endless shadows, including the floor, the walls and even the ceiling. It looked like she was standing on a platform of light in the heart of an abyss.

The shifting shadow absorbed the light emitted from the seal and died a swift death, revealing the large man hidden underneath. With the eerie light striking his wild white mane of hair, Jiraiya suddenly held the allure of the supernatural.

His frown spoke of annoyance, with no trace of the unease that was suddenly striking her heart. "What? You're still dressed, girl? Come on, we don't have all day. Show me some skin!"

Sakura felt her eyes open uncomfortably as her mind touched and tasted a truly horrific idea. She turned towards her Hokage, hoping desperately that it was she, and not the world around her that had gone insane.

Those hopes were dashed when the woman showed her approval, nodding grimly with no trace of compassion.

'Hell no.'

She swiveled on the balls of her feet, several curses primed on the tip of her tongue as she prepared to give the perverted old man a truly caustic piece of her mind. But he took the initiative, snorting loudly and looking terribly amused by the look on her face. She bit he tongue. Perverted or not, he was still one of the legendary sannin. She might have been angry, but she wasn't crazy enough to interrupt him. Who knew? He might just remove her ability to speak.

"Don't flatter yourself girl. You still need about a decade before you can start worrying about me."

Heat blossomed in her face as she found herself torn between mortification and relief.

"Now, come on." Jiraiya knelt on the stone floor and took out a bowl and a small brush from the folds of his clothing. "Let's get started!"

She hesitated. How could she not? But the Hokage's dispassionate eyes and Ino's sympathetic moue of disgust held little reprieve, so she just sighed and reached for her zipper.

Her tongue couldn't stand the repression any longer and rebelled. "Don't call me that," she muttered.

"What's that?" he asked as he unscrewed the bowl's top. "Speak louder."

She stopped to glare at him with her left shoulder bared, the white bra strap exposed. "I said: Don't call me that! I'm not a girl anymore."

His smirk grew wide enough to reveal his shiny teeth, but he didn't laugh. Instead, he looked up at her and asked: "Well, what are you then?" His eyes dropped to her hips and he waved. "The shorts as well."

She pursed her lips, but finished stepping out of her dress. "I'm a Konohagakura kunoichi."

In the face of such a man, that statement felt somewhat flat, even to her. This time he couldn't stop himself from chuckling merrily. "Fine then, little ninja."

That term earned him a scowl, but she figured that was the best she was likely to get out of him. When her tight shorts _–_she had recently outgrown them_– _slipped down her legs and onto the floor, she made sure to glare at him in warning.

"I'm not taking anything else off."

Jiraiya merely nodded. "That's fine. Lay down here. On your front."

She couldn't help but approach warily, clad as she was in nothing but her underwear, a simple cotton bra with matching panties, both white. Without her dress the chamber's controlled temperature felt decidedly chilly and nipped eagerly at her skin, while the stone floor felt like ice underneath her naked feet. She turned to Jiraiya and found him staring back, his expression void of anything.

She laid down without a word.

The ink was cold as well.

Later on, with the ink on her skin dry and glowing eerily, she was settled beside her teammate's comatose body on the opposite of her rival and temporary guide, still clad in nothing but her undergarments. They were the only ones left in the sealing circle, and within this illusionary darkness, it was easy to forget that they weren't alone in the world.

"Hey, Ino?" Sakura whispered, breaking the silence.

Ino's voice traveled across Naruto's disturbingly still chest, and it brought sassiness. "We're supposed to fall asleep, Forehead."

"I know, but–" She struggled for words for a moment. "Why are you wearing Naruto's jacket?"

The sound of her rival's giggling brought her spirits down, sharply. "Why? Are you jealous?"

Sakura grimaced. "Ugh! Never mind!" And closed her eyes.

When they opened next, her eyes perceived a changed world. The darkness remained as it was, looming and ever-present, but everything else seemed to have tilted ever so slightly, as though she was only seeing the other side of a coin.

The pale blue that had emanated from the sealing circle was replaced by a soft crimson leaking from the very air, and the circle itself gave its place to a flooded hallway with no end her eye could see. And finally, though her companions remained the same their roles were exchanged, with Ino hanging limply off of Naruto's shoulder.

His lips were moving with considerable speed, but no sound reached her ears, obstructed as they were by a sharp buzzing sound, as if she'd gotten too close to an explosion.

'He's not wearing his jacket,' she noted idly. 'Did he give it to Ino?'

With her mind revolving around clothing, it didn't take much longer for her to realize that she wasn't wearing anything more than wet, white underwear.

She screamed, and found the absence of a corresponding echo in her own ears quite discomforting. So she screamed harder, or tried to at least.

It was like a nightmare.

Suddenly, something warm smothered her mouth, so she opened her eyes and met Naruto's wide, frightened stare.

She pried his palm off of her mouth, using more nails than were strictly necessary. "Give me your shirt," she demanded.

The boy had to shuffle Ino around like she was a sack of potatoes, but he hurriedly drew his shirt up around his neck and threw it at her before her patience ran out.

His lips were flapping around again, so she decided to clue him in. She just couldn't be bothered to read his lips right now. Her head was all… fuzzy.

"I can't hear you. Stop talking." She wasted no time pulling the shirt over her head, noting that it was curiously dry, but found herself agitated by how little it actually covered.

'Oh yeah. Naruto's shorter than me.'

As it was, the hem of his black shirt barely reached the top of her thighs, and would doubtlessly offer tantalizing glimpses of her panties as she walked. Of course, while she was still under the purview of those wolfish blue eyes, that was unacceptable.

She looked at him and found him staring back, only his sight was aimed a bit lower than her face. Her face flushed with heat and she pulled the shirt down as far as it would go.

His chest was bare, exposing a beautiful gem hanging on a necklace. Her eyes remained stubbornly stuck to it for a long moment, but eventually focused on the prize.

"Your pants… give them to me!"

He took a step back, alarm etched on his soft features. "B-but! Sakura-chan!"

She barreled his objections down like a train car. "Stop complaining! I can't go around like this, it's indecent!"

"Well, what about me then?"

She rolled her eyes. "You're a boy! Who cares if you go around in your underwear?"

He grumbled and pouted, but pulled his zipper down, his concerns proven invalid. It was only as he hopped around on one leg, trying to pull his pants off without dropping Ino, that she realized it.

The splash's echo tickled her ears.

"Hey… I can hear you now!"

She caught a flicker of blue as he glanced up through his fringe, but he didn't say anything.

The blond threw his bundled up pants across the metaphorical chasm separating them, and she caught them offhand. She unraveled the pair before her and examined them through the critical eyes of a stylish young girl. They were soaking wet, orange and probably dirty, but they were infinitely better than walking around half naked. She slipped them on, wincing at the feeling of cold, wet cloth on her skin.

"So… Sakura-chan! What brings you here?"

She watched him carefully as she finished buttoning his pants. He was smiling, but she wasn't fooled. That wasn't Naruto, and she wasn't about to forget it. That, was a guardian at best and an obstacle at worst.

"You know why I'm here," she stated.

His smile died.

"You too, huh?" He chuckled. "He'd be glad to see himself become so popular. You know, I'm kind of surprised to see you chasing after him, Sakura-chan."

"He's my teammate. Team Seven sticks together."

He said nothing in response.

"Are you going to try and stop me?" she asked.

He shrugged. "That's my job."

She frowned at him and crossed her arms. "Your job? Wait, did Naruto put you up to this? Why would he stop us from trying to find him?"

The clone shook his head. "I'm just supposed to stop anyone from getting in here. I don't think he knew people would just appear out of nowhere."

"What?" Something didn't make sense, but the clone kept talking before she could figure it out.

"Well, this place isn't safe, Sakura-chan. If I wasn't here—"

"Hey… Watchman, right?" Ino's mumbling voice asked sluggishly. "Why are you naked?"

Watchman turned to her and said, without a trace of irony: "Sakura-chan mugged me."

It was like the punchline to a joke and Ino burst into giggles. Sakura felt like punching them both in the stomach. "S-shut up! He's not naked! He still has his underwear!"

That only made her laugh harder. "Oh, sorry! Did I interrupt you? Don't mind me! C-carry on!" The rest of it was more laughter than words and was thus completely unintelligible.

They had to wait for a while for Ino to regain her composure, and Sakura felt as though every second stretched on to forever. Her face burned with shame, and her jaw tightened underneath the flames.

And with his arm still wrapped around Ino's convulsing waist, the clone known as Watchman watched her unwaveringly.

Eventually, she got her fill of it. She looked him in the eyes. "It's rude to stare, you know. So stop it!"

He jumped as if startled. His free hand came up to scratch the back of his head in a familiar manner, and she had to remind herself once again. 'This is not Naruto.'

"Sorry," he mumbled his apology. "It's just… I know I've never seen you before. But I have all these memories and it's so different."

Sakura cocked her head in puzzlement. "Different how?"

He looked at her then, and she felt his wonder. She saw the depth of his emotions reflected in his eyes and was frightened.

"Better," he said.

Ino's fingers pinched the elastic of his boxers and pulled.

_Snap!_

"Ow!"

His retreat kicked up a wave that nearly reached his chest and quickly disappeared into the darkness. Watchman stared at Ino, scandalized like a Sister of the cloth stumbling across a naked man.

Ino's smirk showed no sign of contriteness, and Sakura had to hold back a few giggles herself. Ino shook her head in mock sadness.

"You're so pathetic. You do know she's your enemy, right? How are you going to stop her like this? You can't even look at her without going all gaga!"

Watchman stilled, then relaxed. "Sakura-chan is not my enemy. And neither are you." He seemed so calm, so sure of himself when he said that, almost solemn.

Ino scoffed, unimpressed. "What else can we be? We're trying to infiltrate what you're trying to protect. Make up your mind already. Try to stop us or get out of the way."

Sakura winced. "Ino, don't provoke him."

Ino whirled on her. "Come on, Forehead! Show some spine! It's two on one, and it's Naruto. We've got this!"

"It's _not_ Naruto!" Sakura yelled. When she saw Ino jerk back, shocked at her reaction, she took a deep breath and tried to calm down. "You're taking this too lightly, Ino-pig."

"You two…"

Sakura and Ino turned towards Watchman as he addressed them.

"You keep treating this as if it was a fortress, but it's not. This place is a labyrinth. Don't go any deeper."

Ino blinked. "Um… We learned about this, didn't we? What's the difference between the two again?"

"Conventional wisdom states that a fortress is built to keep the enemy from coming in. A labyrinth, on the other hand, is designed to keep the enemy from escaping, usually a lesser demon of some sort," Sakura recited from memory. She then frowned. "Wait…"

Ino whistled. "Wow. I knew Naruto was in denial, but I didn't think it was this bad. Does he really dump all his bad memories in here? No wonder this place is so horrible then. I get it. He probably drowns the memories in the sub-levels."

She trailed off and frowned as she seemed to think of something.

"What is it?" Sakura asked.

"Nothing. It's just…" Ino shook her head. "This place is different than when I was here earlier. Why is that? Ugh, this place is so weird."

Sakura left Ino to her musings and turned towards the silent guardian. "Nothing to say?"

Watchman kept his tongue. Both his eyes were opened wide and he seemed almost stunned.

Sakura frowned. "Watchman?"

"Please leave. This place is not for you."

An uneasy feeling blossomed in Sakura's chest. Something about the way he pleaded with them made her uncomfortable, wary. Yet still—

"I'm not leaving. Not without Naruto."

Ino swiveled around to face her, but Sakura ignored her. She knew why her rival was so surprised. The Hokage had given them a simple mission. They were to confirm whether they could get past Watchman, and then return immediately.

But Sakura was not about to let such an opportunity pass her by.

'Those who abandon their teammates are worse than trash. Right, Kakashi-sensei?'

Watchman shook his head in dismay. "But Naruto isn't here!"

"Then go find him!"

He shook his head again, vehemently this time. "I can't leave you here! I won't!"

"Fine!" she yelled. "Then bring us to him!"

Watchman shut his eyes and sighed. "I can't do that either. But I might know someone who can."

He presented both his hands to them. "Please. Both of you take my hand."

Sakura threw a glance at Ino, but neither of them had any objections. They took hold of his hands and braced themselves for anything.

Watchman looked at them in turn. "Don't let go."

Something he did just then reverberated against her chakra. It was like standing next to a train going by at full steam, only an echo of the real pressure, but it nearly knocked her over anyway.

Right then, Sakura was struck by the certainty that they never could have beaten him.

There was a faint sound like broken glass, followed by endless, perfect cold. Like a winter storm, it consumed her and everything, even her sight, left her.

Everything, except the warmth of his hand.


	6. Wonderland

Well, look at that. It's been a year. Got a new job last year. That's pretty much it.

This next chapter took a long while to put down on paper, and I'm still not satisfied with it. Still, if I wait any longer I'll just end up abandoning this, so here we go. Hope you guys enjoy it.

* * *

Sweet warmth enveloped everything. It was like she'd been stripped down to her bare soul and wrapped in a thick duvet made of care and concern; the feelings carefully harvested raw from the heart of a loved one and tenderly woven into cloth.

She floated on that feeling for an eternity, and once it had passed she started to recover bits and pieces.

At first, he was the only thing she could remember; a boy struggling against an overwhelming force, desperately holding onto something. An odd name. Watchman.

The watchman was holding on to something. She kept coming back to that. It must have been important, she believed, and floated on that feeling ever more.

She realized it suddenly, like a eureka moment. She recognized that something. It was Sakura.

She was Sakura.

For some time, that knowledge was enough. Her curiosity had been satisfied and she floated on peacefully, as Sakura. But then the feeling disappeared.

He had let go.

It was like plunging into a pool of freezing water. She gasped sharply as her body returned to her, like she was coming awake.

Her eyes snapped open as her heart kicked into high gear, transitioning her inner rhythm into a drum roll. The pulsing beat enthralled her body, invading it like an infection, and her intake of air multiplied as the cycle accelerated.

'So dark... I-I can't, I can't see!'

She blinked once, then twice and thrice in succession, but nothing changed. The abyss in front of her still stretched forever. Her heart skipped a beat and failed to recover, fouling the sound as her heartbeat erred into palpitations. The dissonance polluted her mind with warnings. It was like an alarm, and her mind instinctively reacted, preparing for danger as best it could, pumping adrenaline into her bloodstream.

Only, as far as she could tell, she was alone in the vast emptiness with nothing to prepare for. But the circumstances failed to lessen the urge by a single iota, and the stress of it all began to unravel her mind. Soon enough, she started feeling like she was trapped, and had to do something, anything at all, to get out.

Something pierced the haze of panic just as it was to take control of her limbs; a pair of blue eyes cast in a worried face, flashing in her mind. As the image stole her attention, from the abyss it appeared. A single bright dot, hovering before her.

Sakura turned her eyes aside, but snapped them right back when the dot didn't follow. It was like a distant star, a single glowing pinprick in the fabric of eternity.

'What is that?' she asked herself.

In answer, it exploded, spewing forth torrents of multicolored sand, replacing the previous abyss with a disorienting technicolor maelstrom.

Her eyes snapped shut, unable to bear the sight. She winced, then grimaced as she felt the sudden onset of a pounding headache. The feeling swelled like a balloon, pushing intently against the soft boundaries of her mind, stretching them to their limits.

She grunted in pain and clenched at her forehead, like the external pressure was the only thing holding it together, until what felt like a white-hot spear lanced its way down her spine.

She screamed.

"Sakura!"

A pair of hands, slight, feminine and holding firmly onto her shoulders shook her lightly. Her head lolled about, throwing her thoughts into disarray until she recovered enough coordination to grab onto the dainty wrists jerking her around. Thankfully, that was enough to stop them.

She breathed for a moment, heavily.

She'd been moved. On a concrete floor somewhere dry. A gentle breeze caressed her face and toyed with her loose hair. It was warm like summertime and smelled fresh, like the forests surrounding the village.

"Hey, you ok Forehead?"

Her eyelids twitched, but didn't open.

'Ino...'

Sakura held onto Ino's wrists with her eyes held shut, afraid to face this foreign world, and took a moment to bask in her friend's warmth.

"What the hell did you do?" Ino asked angrily.

Bare feet shuffled against the concrete floor.

"Hey, pay attention! What did you do?" Ino asked, taking care to emphasize and articulate each word.

Mumbled excuses lumbered into her ears; "That wasn't my fault," he said, and she knew even he didn't believe it. From the tone of voice you'd think he was apologizing to Sasuke.

Ino's laugh was sharp and mocking, the single cackle was like a nail pounding into her forehead. "Not your fault? Then whose fault is it? We're in your head, you moron!"

"Look, I told you this place was dangerous, so stop acting like I'm the one trying to hurt you!"

Sakura mashed her eyes shut and desperately tried to shut them out. "Please stop talking," she mumbled.

It was almost like she wasn't even there.

"What the hell is wrong with this place?" Ino's grip on Sakura's shoulders tightened noticeably. "What kind of kid has a mind like this?"

"Hey, you don't like it? So sorry. Don't let the door hit you on the way out," he snarled.

Ino growled. "Stop trying to get rid of me and pay attention, moron! You might not have noticed, but something like this isn't normal. This place feels like... like... I can't even say what it feels like! Experienced jounin don't have minds like this! What the hell is wrong with you?"

"There's nothing wrong with me!" he yelled. "And stop calling me a moron!"

"Then stop acting like one and listen to me!" Ino replied.

Aggravation simply dripped from every word that came out of his mouth. "How 'bout you stop acting like such a bitch?"

Sakura grimaced the moment she heard him say it.

Ino gasped. "What did you just call me?" she yelled shrilly, and suddenly her grip on Sakura's shoulders seemed like it would leave bruises; the pain making Sakura's eyes snap open.

Watchman slipped his pinky finger into his ear and twisted nonchalantly. "What? Are you deaf?" Pulling it free with a slight 'pop', he examined the results of his expedition with a grimace, completely ignoring the sight and sound of Ino shaking in fury.

"Say it again, so I can hear it clearly," Ino said, intently.

Watchman smirked and opened his mouth to say something undoubtedly offensive when Sakura quickly decided that dealing with her headache could, and would, have to wait. She raised her hand, palm up and facing him, and he stopped like it was a brick wall.

"Stop it. Both of you," she wheezed. Her voice sounded like gravel and felt like sandpaper, but the mission would be deemed a pretty definitive failure if she allowed him to provoke Ino into a murderous frenzy.

Watchman seemed sheepish and began to scratch the back of his neck in an achingly familiar way, while Ino huffed disdainfully and crossed her arms with an unfriendly look in her eyes.

"Sorry Sakura-chan," he apologized.

Ino wasn't quite as accommodating. "You're not the boss of me, Forehead. Don't think you can tell me what to do," she asserted.

Sakura sighed and massaged her aching head with both hands.

"Oi!" Watchman expressed his disapproval in Naruto's usual fashion, loudly.

"What? You got something to say?" Ino challenged him, completely confident.

Watchman frowned. "Give me my jacket back."

Ino blanched, her smirk instantly wiped off her face. Her hand clutched at the heavy orange fabric almost desperately as she looked away from him.

"No," she refused.

He crossed his arms, his beautiful necklace gleaming against his skin. "I don't want to give my jacket to someone who's going to be mean to Sakura-chan."

Ino's eyes flicked in her direction, obviously weighing her options; she looked up to the pipes in the ceiling, then down to the cracks in the concrete before her shoulders slumped almost a inch.

"Fine. I'll be nicer to your precious 'Sakura-chan'," Ino said, mocking his tone somewhat bitterly.

She imitated his voice rather well. To be honest, Sakura was kind of impressed. Watchman wasn't, though.

He glared her down without a trace of humor. "You know, Ino... it's dangerous out there; real dangerous. We're not all friendly, y'know? And Sakura-chan definitely has the best chance of making her way through without problems. Be nice to her, or you might not like what happens."

Sakura blinked in rapid succession. "Was that a threat?" she asked, completely surprised.

Watchman jumped like a startled doe. "What? No!" he cried.

Sakura cocked her head. "Really? Because that sure sounded like a threat." At her side, Ino climbed to her feet, her face suddenly vacuous.

He flushed in embarrassment as he furiously protested his innocence. "No! I'm trying to help you here!"

"Hey, shut up for a second," Ino said as she stepped into his personal space. Watchman's eyes widened and he almost lost his balance when he leaned back to create separation. He took a long step back and was visibly distressed when Ino simply took a long step forwards.

"What's with you!" he cried.

She snapped her fingers in front of his face to get his attention. "What did you mean by 'out there'?" she asked urgently.

He grabbed onto her shoulders and held her back, looking quite confused. "Oi oi, what? You know? Outside? Not here? What else do you want me to say?"

"Show me," she demanded.

Watchman shook his head as Ino turned to walk back towards Sakura. "Jeez. What did you think I was going to do? I said I knew someone who could tell you where Naruto was. What did you think I meant?" he muttered.

The blonde knelt next to her friend and shouldered her arm. "Come on, on three. One, two, three!"

Sakura grimaced as she forced her legs to hold her weight, and managed to disguise a whisper beneath her grunts of effort. "What the hell, Ino?"

Ino gave her a tight smile, and quietly helped her walk.

Watchman eyed Ino warily and pointed down the hall. "It's this way."

* * *

He led them to a doorway obstructed by an iron bar gate, similar to those used in prison cells, only without a discernible lock. Instead, it was fastened shut by a golden crossbar about six feet in length of plain cylindrical shape, with artistic designs etched into its surface. Each end of the bar hung on a pair of foot high catches drilled into the concrete on each side of the door.

'That's odd,' Sakura mused.

The catches were closed-ended. The rod could only be removed by lifting it.

Ino scoffed. "Really?"

Watchman groaned. "What's the problem now?"

"I just don't see the point of this setup. Anyone on the other side can just fit their arms through the bars and open the door. It's stupid," Ino pointed out.

"Oh really?" he drawled. "Why don't you give it a try then?"

Ino turned to her with the urge to prove him wrong just plastered all over her face.

Sakura sighed. 'It can't be that simple. Not if he's looking so smug,' she thought. But it would probably be faster to let this all play out, so she just nodded. "I'm good. I'm starting to feel better, anyway."

Her friend gradually allowed her legs to hold up her entire weight, and when it was made clear that she had no real issue remaining upright, the blonde rushed off to butt heads with Naruto's look-alike.

She strode past the smirking boy and settled in front of the shut gate, placing both hands on the golden crossbar. After taking a moment to feel the texture of the rod, she applied upwards pressure.

Nothing happened. Well, Watchman's smirk widened, but the bar didn't budge at all.

Ino frowned. She widened her stance, bending her knees slightly, and pushed upwards. Sakura could see the muscles in her friend's neck twitching as she flexed her back muscles in conjunction with her legs and arms, but still the bar refused to move. She growled and grunted and huffed and puffed as she exerted herself for the longest time, but there was nothing to it.

Finally, Watchman intervened, apparently having gotten his fill of watching Ino fail. "You're gonna hurt yourself, you know," he said. Then, as if to show his unending contempt, he casually reached out with his right hand and lifted the rod from its resting place.

Ino stared at him incredulously amid heaving gasps, momentarily speechless.

Sakura cocked her head in puzzlement. "Huh. You're the only one who can lift it? How does that work? Fuuinjutsu?"

He smiled shyly and shook his head. "Nah. It's nothing that complicated, Sakura-chan. Watch." He raised the bar to shoulder height and let it fall.

Everything seemed normal as it fell, but then it hit the ground.

_Crack!_

The bar fell at an angle, but when the tip hit the ground it didn't bounce from the force of the impact. The concrete floor was like wet clay for all that it repelled the falling crossbar. The golden rod ended up embedded into the floor, with small cracks and broken chips of concrete spread out from the point of impact.

"Oh," Sakura said, her tame reaction belying her surprise.

"Anyone can lift it, as long as they're strong enough," Watchman claimed as he bent over to do just that.

She watched him force his fingers into the concrete with only a consistent low volume crackle to indicate the amount of force involved. When lifted the rod off the floor, grey dust sprinkled down from the cracks in his clenched fist.

Sakura winced and met Ino's wide eyes as her friend shook her head, her lips giving shape to her thoughts. "This doesn't make any _sense_," Ino mumbled despairingly.

Watchman just shrugged and pointed to the unbarred gateway, holding the apparently incredibly dense bar in his off-hand with the end leaning against his shoulder. She couldn't help but notice that he didn't seem to feel the weight at all.

"Well, come on. You wanted me to bring you outside, right? So let's go already," he said with little enthusiasm, before leading the way.

Ino frowned and hurried past in pursuit. "I have to see this."

Sakura just stood there for a moment, quietly suppressing the urge to throttle her friend and comrade. In the end, she sighed and began to gently massage her forehead.

'Why do I get the feeling that Ino's going to make this a whole lot harder than it has to be?'

Beyond the gate was a stone tunnel with a gentle upward slope. It was obviously man-made, the walls and ceiling bore the marks of tools and inlaid into the ground were a series of cheap wooden steps; plain four-by-four's by the look of them. At the other end of the tunnel was an opening, exposing white light her eyes could not penetrate.

Sakura eyed her naked feet with a grimace before starting up the path. Hopefully, reaching their destination wouldn't involve a lot of walking.

She stepped off the last step with squinted eyes and kept her hand above her eyes, hoping to keep too many of the sun's bright rays from cramming down her wide-open pupils. She was only mildly successful. After a few seconds of aching pain, her eyes managed to adjust enough for her to actually see.

"Wow," she breathed, awed by the scenery.

The tunnel she'd just exited was just a pinprick at the foot of a mountain. Vibrant short-length grass spread out across a landscape sectioned by streams of sparkling water, each and every one flowing towards the mountain. Multicoloured flowerbeds peppered the verdant carpet and isolated saplings reached for the sky like kneeling worshippers, their foliage dancing in unison to the rhythm of the wind.

It was breathtaking; the largest, most beautiful meadow she'd ever seen.

Sakura took a deep breath of fresh, lightly perfumed air and felt a smile blossom on her face. "It's so pretty! What's it called?"

"What?"

Watchman walked up to her from her right, his confusion sculpting his squint, the curve of his lips and the angle of his brow.

He really did look like Naruto… down to the very last detail.

Her smile died.

Sakura waved towards the wide expanse ahead. "This place, what's it called?"

Watchman cocked his head and hummed. "I dunno. I don't think it has a name, really."

She turned to look at him, mildly curious. "Why not?"

He shrugged. "It's just a place, y'know? Nothing special."

Sakura huffed and crossed her arms. "Well, I think this place is special."

Watchman smiled and his cheeks filled with color. "Naruto would be happy to hear you say that."

She wondered at his meaning for a moment, but then she remembered that they were currently in Naruto's head. His stare and that goofy smile nearly set her on fire and her body responded by almost smothering her with embarrassment. Her face began to heat up as the implications of this whole conversation grew incredibly awkward, and she ducked her head to avoid meeting his eyes.

If she was to survive this mission, she really needed to watch what she said. She never imagined that this could be possible, but these copies weren't nearly as discreet as the original was when it came to their feelings.

"Umm… where's Ino?" she asked, in an utterly transparent attempt to distract him.

"Eh? She's over there…" he said, trailing off into hesitant mumblings. "I think she's having a breakdown or something."

Her eyebrows perked up.

* * *

Her hands shook as her heart fluttered in her chest.

She had been brought to her knees by the weight of sudden knowledge, as she had not the fortitude to withstand it. Her composure had cracked then broken. The realization had been like the impact of a boulder against stained glass and she was left to pick up the pieces.

Though only barely aware, she managed to catch the sound of shifting grass and knew they were getting closer. Her shoulders locked up tight and cold sweat dripped down her temple. She squeezed her hands into tight, quivering muscle and began to actively control her breathing.

'Come on girl, get a hold of yourself! You've been trained for this!'

She should have never listened to Sakura. They should have left the minute they realized that Watchman was going to let them go past, like they were supposed to! Damn it, she was just a genin! The only thing she knew about village secrets was that she wasn't allowed to know any of them!

She heard Sakura swallow nervously; a nostalgic sound. "Ino? Are you ok?" the girl asked.

Her heartbeat began to slow, and she knew what she had to do. She just had to get them out of there alive.

She hesitated, but decided against deception and shook her head. She didn't know how Watchman would react if she said anything, but she'd have to risk it. There was simply no other way she'd convince Sakura to turn back.

"Well, then what's wrong?"

'Everything,' she thought, but decided to focus on the most glaring problem.

"There's a sun in the sky," Ino answered, her voice wavering ever so slightly.

There was a pause in the conversation as Sakura took a moment to try and decipher the message hidden underneath.

"What?" Sakura said, finally, having failed to realize that her answer was meant to be taken at face value.

Her heart rate continued to slow steadily and she smiled thinly as she finally mastered her shaking hands, uncoiling her dexterous fingers. Her mind compressed into a knife's edge as her training kicked in.

_Kill your heart, young kunoichi. It will only burden you._

"Where are we are Sakura?" Ino asked.

Her friend shifted noisily. "Where are you taking this?"

"Just answer."

"What, did you forget? We need to find Naruto, Ino! Stop wasting our time here!" Sakura exclaimed, frustrated.

Though Sakura's tone would have normally had her gritting her teeth, Ino kept her cool and left the bait on the line, refusing to let them get drawn into the familiar confines of an argument.

"We are in Naruto's head, Sakura. We're in his mind, on the bridge between his throne and his spirit. This place can't be faked, Sakura. It's the most intimate part of him, the truest reflection of what he is."

"Ino?"

She ignored Sakura's call. "The clan scrolls refer to this as the Inner Egg. Everyone has one, you know, even you. For most people, the Egg is shapeless, formless and shrouded in impenetrable darkness. The scrolls say that this represents a person's inability to understand himself. If the Egg has form, then it becomes much harder for our techniques to take hold, and the bigger it is, the more difficult it becomes.

"The thing is, Sakura, giving the egg shape is hard work, even if it happens naturally. I've been working on mine for six years and it's only about as big as my room. My dad has been working on his for thirty years, and it's still only about big as the first floor of our house!"

Ino craned her neck and squinted as she stared into the endless expanse above her. "It's called an egg for a reason, Sakura. It's usually an enclosed space. And here we are, standing at the foot of a mountain, with the sun shining brightly in the sky."

Her eyes instinctively examined the wispy clouds embellishing the blue canvas for faults and imperfections, but she stopped and grimaced when she realized what she was doing. She kept trying to prove herself wrong, but the more she looked the more her conclusion seemed ironclad.

Sakura shuffled about nervously. "What are you saying, Ino?"

"You know what I'm saying, Sakura," Ino said confidently.

"Don't put words in my mouth," Sakura answered frostily.

Ino closed her eyes and counted to three. She pushed off the soft grass and climbed to her feet, finally turning to face Sakura and their supposed guide. Her friend was tense and her crossed arms and furrowed brow poorly reflected the turmoil boiling inside, but Ino could read Sakura like the billboard that was her forehead.

'Damn it, Sakura! You're his teammate! If anyone's in a position to connect-the-dots, it's you. You're more than smart enough to know where I'm going with this, but you just won't try!' Ino narrowed her eyes and bristled as Sakura matched her glare. 'Fine, I'll just have to shove your face in it!'

Watchman waited quietly behind Sakura and seemed content to just keep his eyes on them and stay out of the way. As such, he was unprepared and very much startled when she abruptly locked eyes with him, and he nervously shuffled back when she stomped past Sakura on a collision course with his unprotected body.

His eyes were wide and apprehensive. "Hey! What did I do?" he complained as he slipped the rod off of his shoulders and interposed it between them like it was part of a ten foot palisade.

Ino stopped just out of easy reach of that golden staff and glared at him. Not with anger, but with sobriety.

He noticed. The arms holding the bar aloft slackened a little as he met the intensity of her gaze with bewildered blue eyes. "Oi... Why are you looking at me like that?"

"What are you, Naruto?" she asked him.

He blinked and tilted his head. "Eh? I'm not Naru-"

"That's not what I'm asking," she interrupted. "I'm not asking 'who', I'm asking 'what'. I-_w__e_need to know what you are, Naruto!"

Watchman frowned and shook his head. "I don't understand. I'm a genin? Is that what you mean? What does that have to do with anything?"

Sakura spoke up sounding annoyed. "Ino. If there's something you want to say, just say it. Otherwise, Naruto's still out there and we're wasting time when he could need our help! Stop trying to lead us by the nose and speak plainly!"

A simple glimpse of her friend's face showed that she was out of time. She pursed her lips in distaste, but spat out the unripe revelation anyway.

"Naruto isn't human."

* * *

The wind picked up violently in the wake of Ino's words, whipping them all in the face as if in punishment for the affront. It died down quickly, leaving them to wallow in the midst of miserable silence.

Ino loomed over Watchman like the hand of Judgment, her demeanour summarized in a word: _j__'__accuse_. The boy weathered the accusation like a flower weathered a hurricane and was seemingly left in shock. He stared at Ino like a spectator at the show of the century, with wide eyes and a gaping mouth.

Sakura gently massaged her temples with the tips of her fingers. "Ino, out of all the things I thought you were going to say," she murmured.

The blonde didn't give him the chance to collect his thoughts. "Well? If you care about Sakura at all, you'll tell her just what you are before it's too late."

Watchman's eyes widened. "You… You think…" He shook his head silently, having failed to say anything meaningful.

Sakura's lips tightened. Enough was enough. She marched on over to Ino and reached for her elbow, gripped it hard enough for it to hurt and pulled back sharply, forcing Ino to look her in the eyes. "Ino, what the hell is wrong with you?"

She saw the anger in her friend's eyes and knew from experience that her retaliation would be violent, so she braced herself and was left flailing in the wind when Ino swallowed that anger and forcibly calmed herself down.

Sakura froze, stunned, and felt her heart sink under the rush of anxiety.

"I know he's your teammate, but you can't let your personal feelings get in the way of your assessment of the situation. Open your eyes, Sakura!" Ino yelled.

"I-" she tried to interrupt, but Ino was like a runaway train. She shook her head wildly, and for the first time Sakura saw the cold edge of the fear that gripped her friend.

"This place doesn't make any sense! It's just too big!"

Sakura was really getting tired of stumbling around in the dark. "Ino, I don't know what you're talking about. I don't understand at all!"

Ino looked at her like she had just said that she found Rock Lee more attractive than Sasuke. "What do you mean you don't understand? Just look at this place!"

Sakura growled in frustration. "Look at what? There's nothing wrong with it!"

"Exactly!" Ino exclaimed. "That's exactly it, Sakura. This place is too real!"

Sakura frowned. "What?"

Ino's head dipped as she lost herself in thought. "I mean, just look at the grass! The grass nearest the mountain isn't as tall as the grass further out in the field, the blades of grass themselves aren't identical, and I keep looking but I can't find any pattern!"

The first thing they learned in genjutsu awareness class was that all genjutsu were patterned, because of the simple fact that human beings were incapable of creating anything truly random, especially not spontaneously.

Every single lesson after the first was spent learning ways to find those patterns. For five years, they spent a few hours every week learning how to tell reality apart from anything that wasn't.

Sakura looked around. She looked at the sun, she looked at the skies. She looked at the mountain, at the streams, at the plants, at the grass, at the earth. She looked at her clothes. She looked at the skin covering her hands, and stopped trying.

She couldn't distinguish this place from reality at all.

That… shouldn't be possible. Not at this scale. This was just so far beyond the realm of possibility that it was actually somewhat frightening.

She couldn't help it. She started thinking about it, seriously this time, and inadvertently fed the seed of doubt.

She tried saying something. "B-but…" She stopped.

There was an intense urge within her to deny Ino's accusation, and she indulged it liberally only to find that she had nothing to say. So her lips shaped words that wouldn't come, and her arms gestured dully in response to half formed thoughts; fantasies that disintegrated under the weight of reality.

Ino took a long look at her and disregarded her efforts, turning back to glare at Watchman and sending a spike of anxiety shooting up Sakura's spine.

"W-wait!" she cried out. "What about the clones? Maybe this is impossible for one person to do, b-but what about a thousand? What about ten thousand or a hundred thousand?"

Ino closed her eyes and sighed. "Hold your breath, Sakura."

Sakura blinked, confused by the request. "What?"

"It'll take less time to show you," Ino claimed. "Hold your breath."

She hesitated for a moment or two, but Ino seemed serious about this so she just did it. She bit her lip and stopped breathing.

Ten seconds. Twenty. Thirty.

"Start jumping in place," Ino instructed. So she started hopping in place, hoping that Ino wasn't just being annoying.

One minute. One thirty.

It wasn't long after that that the pressure overwhelmed her discipline. It was a horrible feeling, like the hands of death were reaching up her throat from the inside. She held on for just a moment more, but let go without really straining herself. Still, she bent over and held onto her knees to help keep from collapsing as she gasped for air.

She could have lasted longer, but she couldn't muster up the will when she didn't even know why it was necessary.

Ino was grim-faced. "You see?"

"See what?" Sakura said, without really thinking about it.

Ino groaned. "You're smarter than this, Sakura. Think about it. Why are you gasping right now?"

"Because, I ran out of ai-"

She stopped, and ran that thought again. "I ran out of air…?" she whispered.

That didn't make sense. That didn't make sense at all.

The urge to breathe rises as the body builds up carbon dioxide. It is a physical reaction to the amount of carbon dioxide in the bloodstream. They learned this in biology class when it was explained why cutting off someone's air supply wasn't enough to incapacitate them. They had to make sure that they cut off the flow of blood heading towards the brain.

So how could she feel the need to breathe? She left her body behind when they began the mission.

Sakura pulled her hand off her knee and stared at the lines covering her palm. She hadn't really paid attention earlier, but… weren't these lines a bit different than usual? She remembered because all the girls became interested in palm reading a few years back and she'd spent long hours staring at her own palm trying to predict her own future, mostly in terms of how it related to Sasuke.

'Yeah… my heart line isn't this long! And my marriage line is off too! This… is this even my palm?'

Ino must have seen the dawning horror creeping onto her face because she chose that very moment to speak up. "I didn't want to tell you, you know, because I didn't know how you'd react."

Sakura remained silent, desperately hoping that she her assessment would turn out to be completely wrong.

"We have bodies, Sakura," Ino confirmed, wrapping her arms around herself. The move looked perfectly natural and completely unconscious, as if in response to a sudden chill. Under the circumstances, it was distressing. "I should have known when I tried to lift that staff, but I was just so _sure_ that it was some kind of trick. But it wasn't! My muscles were just too weak to lift it."

Ino paused and looked at her like the lone survivor looked at the next of kin. "Nothing… nothing human could do this. Nothing close."

She didn't say anything more. Nothing else needed to be said.

Sakura stared at the palm of her hands as something painful pinched her heart.

It felt like…

It felt like losing a friend.

"We shouldn't stay here, Sakura. We're in over our heads."

A heavy object hit the soft ground with a hefty thump. She looked up to see Watchman's golden staff buried halfway into the ground as he stood loosely, staring into the wide expanse above him.

His mouth opened slowly and deliberately, and she felt her nerves stretch as her anxiousness climbed further away from her composure.

"Not human?" he articulated. "You say I'm not human? That's the worst joke I ever heard."

Ino's shoulders tensed. "Lying won't help anyone, Naru-"

Watchman's head snapped down. "I'm _not_ Naruto," he snapped. "And you know what? You're lucky that I'm the one hearing this. If you said that to Naruto I don't think he'd ever forgive your stupidity!"

Ino grit her teeth. "Even if you treat me like I'm an idiot, you can't hide what you are; not here! So just shut up and get out of our way!"

His eyes were wide open, holding none of his fury back. "What gives you the right?" he asked. "You think you can just get in here, waltz around like a moron and just decide? What the hell makes you so special, huh? What makes you think that you can decide who is and who isn't human?"

Ino glared right back at him. "I don't have to decide anything! It's self-evident! A statement of fact! The sky is blue, water is wet and _you are not human_!"

"Listen Ino. I may not be real, but I lived and I breathed," he admitted, with an achingly earnest expression invigorating his features. "I experienced life just like you. And ever since it ended, I watched over him."

Watchman raised his head towards the heavens. "I am his first success. I am his firstborn son. I know Naruto better than anyone, so I know, I _know_ that Uzumaki Naruto is a human being!"

He brought his arm up and pointed his index finger directly between Ino's eyes. "I'll say it one last time, in his words, so listen well!"

Ino lips thinned as she endured Watchman's furious glare.

"I learned that strength is nothing without heart! So no matter what path I follow, I will never give it up!"

He placed his right palm over his heart, as if he was making a vow. "I will not turn back. I will not give up on myself! That is my nindo, Yamanaka Ino! I am Uzumaki Naruto. I am a proud ninja of Konohagakure and I am a human being. These feelings will never go away! This pride will never diminish!"

He glared at her. Not with furious anger, but with determined enmity, like she represented everything that was wrong in his life. "And nothing you do or say will change that. I don't care if you don't believe me Ino. I believe in myself, and that's all that matters."

Ino's facade cracked, and she shuddered freely for a moment before shaking her head furiously. "Stop… stop treating me like I'm the bad guy here! You're _not_… You just _can't be_ human!" she insisted.

He stalked over to her and grabbed onto her shoulders over the fabric of the jacket he'd lent her. "Then what am I?" he asked her. She didn't answer. "Tell me!" She shook her head.

And Sakura realized that Ino didn't know. She really had no idea. She couldn't even make a guess.

Watchman leaned forward until their eyes were inches apart and spoke from the heart. "I'm not a monster, Ino! I'm not trying to hurt you! If you don't understand me, just say it and I'll help you! But don't…" He choked up. "Don't demonize me! My heart is open to you! No one's stopping you from trying to understand, but you don't ask! You… you just…"

His head and shoulders slumped, shadowing his eyes with his fringe. "You're just like everyone else," he said. His hands slipped off of Ino's shoulders to hang limply at his sides.

Something in her chest felt like it would break if she breathed wrong. She wanted to believe him. Desperately so.

"Naruto…" Sakura whispered.

Watchman turned his head her way. "Still not me, Sakura-chan," he reminded her.

He didn't look sad, or disappointed, or any of the things she'd expected, but the slight smile smoothing down his features was so far down the other end of the spectrum that she had to ask.

"You… you aren't… you're smiling?"

He shrugged, and his hands shifted about aimlessly in search of pockets before flopping down. "Naruto's lost this fight so many times that I can't be depressed about it. I mean, I said what I had to say and it's just not a big deal anymore. I've never had anyone just come out and tell me that they didn't think I was human, but the sentiment isn't much different. She really is just like everyone else, so she'll get to eat crow with them when Naruto becomes Hokage," he determined.

"I'm right here, you know," Ino muttered. Her crossed arms and guarded expression were reminiscent of a scolded child.

Watchman turned to her with an exaggerated expression of surprise. "Sorry, sorry. I didn't think you'd be interested in what a lesser being like me had to say. I guess I should thank the stars that I could ever attract the attention of Inspector Ino," he mocked.

Ino bristled. "You're such a bastard!"

Watchman grinned. "You sure? I could have been born from an egg, for all you know. But then again, you are the Inspector."

Ino flushed red in embarrassment and frustration. "Stop calling me that!"

"What? What's wrong with the Inspector? How 'bout the Detective? Private eye? Dick?"

The last suggestion was accompanied by a slight pelvic thrust that made Ino recoil like she'd been backhanded across the face.

"Ugh! You're so disgusting!"

Sakura sighed as she watched one blond thoroughly needle another, and felt her eyes begin to tear up as the tension dissolved, releasing a flood of relief.

Nothing had been resolved. But… she wouldn't be forced to choose between her friend and her teammate. Not for a while longer.

With the conflict apparently over, she stopped ignoring her surroundings and started. Her ears had long since picked up the distinct, repetitive sound of grass crushed underneath straw sandals.

She looked towards the source and her eyes widened in surprise.

A boy approached. He looked like Naruto, but clearly wasn't. The features were the same but everything else differed.

His hair was longer. It was just as blond, but fell down to his shoulder in disarray, giving him an unkempt look that went beyond Naruto's usual boyish indifference. If he'd been older she was sure he'd have the beard to match, and maybe even the lingering stench of alcohol.

Gone were his orange clothes. Instead, he was wrapped in a black kimono paired with a pair of gray hakama. And at his waist was a sword.

Sakura frowned. "Samurai?"

Watchman stopped in mid-sentence and snapped his head around to glare at the swordsman. "Tch. Why now," he muttered.

Sakura looked to Ino and watched her give the guy a once-over. Her eyebrows perked up.

She noticed that he was getting close and asked, "Who is that?"

Watchman didn't answer. He walked backwards towards his staff, keeping his entire body in line with the samurai. He reached it quickly and knelt to dig it out of the ground, leaving a depression in the soil.

Sakura looked at Ino again. The blond was grim-faced. Her eyes flicked from Watchman to his staff, then to the boy he kept facing.

Sakura thinned her lips. "Watchman?"

His ear turned towards her. "Yeah?"

"Who is that," she asked again.

He thought for a moment, then shrugged. "Dunno."

Ino spoke up. "You don't know? Why are you so aggressive then? Maybe he could help!"

The swordsman slowed to a stop several feet away and seemed to wait for them to finish. Now that he was closer, she could see that his eyes were hard like gemstones. In terms of the feelings they evoked, Watchman's eyes were like a clear pond on a hot summer day. This boy's eyes were more like two feet of solid ice.

Watchman looked at them and smiled mirthlessly. "I know who he's not. That's all that matters."

He turned back to the newcomer and leaned onto his staff.

"So, an old one? That's a surprise. And here I thought that age brought wisdom."

The swordsman tensed. "Better to be a fool than a servant."

Watchman scoffed. "You? A servant? Please. When have you ever done anything to help Naruto?"

"When else? Is that not the reason he brought us here? To bow to his will?"

"Bull," Watchman spat. "When he made you, he shared everything that he was with you, from his body to his mind. If you did anything that helped after your birth it's because you shared his motivation. You did what you wanted to do. No more, no less."

The swordsman sneered. "I see that he's made you into a splendid puppet."

Watchman smirked. "And I see a coward that hopes to steal the throne while the king is off dealing with his unruly kingdom."

The boy's right hand reached for his sword's hilt. "I am quickly growing tired of this conversation."

Watchman raised his staff from the ground and brandished it like it weighed the same as a feather. "Same here. I'll tell you the same thing I always tell trespassers like you, Samurai—"

"Ronin," the swordsman interrupted. "I have no master."

"Cute."

Ino snorted. "For the love of— Could you two be any more dramatic?"

Watchman threw an aggravated glance back. "Oi, Ino? You mind shutting up?"

The ronin nodded. "I must agree, though I loath to admit it."

"I'm serious!" she exclaimed. "Watchman, are you a ninja or aren't you? Are you ever going to fight or are you two just going to… to… to pontificate all day?"

Watchman frowned confusedly. "What? What does that even mean?"

"Never mind that! Do you always get into philosophical debates before you fight or are you two just showing off?" she asked.

Though neither answered, both failed to conceal the way their eyes instantly searched her out.

Ino groaned. "Oh, that is just pathetic!"

Watchman spun away from Ino and cleared his throat. "Anyway! As I was saying, the only one who can pass by me is Uzumaki Naruto, and though we were all gifted with his likeness, in the end, we're just shadows to his light. So turn back, and live whatever life he's given you to the fullest, or lose everything here and now."

The ronin adjusted his grip on the hilt of his sword.

Watchman looked down on him. "It's your funeral."

The ronin bent his knees and leant heavily of his leading foot.

Watchman held his staff before him, the upper hand holding on tightly, the other loosely.

The ronin's sandal dug lightly into the ground. The fingers of his left hand gripped his sheath as his right hand lingered over the hilt.

Watchman's feet spread slowly, widening his stance without affecting his balance.

Between one instant and the next, the ronin disappeared. Before any of them could react, a flash of light captured the attention just in time to see a spray of crimson erupt into the air.

Watchman collapsed, leaking blood onto the ground.

A few feet behind him, the ronin calmly wiped his sword with a bloody handkerchief then sheathed it ceremoniously, with all the care and affection one afforded a lover.

Ino stammered. "Did… did it hit his neck? I- I couldn't see."

Sakura clenched her moist hands into fists and shook her head. "I'm not sure." She took a single step towards Watchman's unmoving body and stopped. She glared at her feet.

'Come on, move! Maybe you could help!'

But they refused to listen. She looked inside to find the pool of her courage and found that it had frozen over. She felt a chill and held back a shiver.

"Sakura, got any ideas?" Ino whispered.

She didn't know. Their guide was dead or dying, and to head back inside the mountain without him was probably suicide. But to go on ahead would mean going past the ronin. She couldn't hold back a shudder at the thought.

The ronin noticed. "Please don't be afraid. I will not hurt you if you step out of the way."

Sakura narrowed her eyes. "So you'll hurt me if I try to stop you?" she questioned.

The ronin hesitated then bowed his head. "I would prefer it if you didn't do that. I had hoped that we could get along after I assumed control."

She crossed her arms and frowned deeply. "You're nothing like him. Why is that?"

The ronin looked at her with a blank face. "I've lived decades without his influence. I grew up."

This boy… he was polite and soft-spoken. He seemed like he would be easy to get along with.

She didn't like him at all.

"And what do you think will happen after you take control? What makes you think we'll accept you as Naruto? What makes you think we'll stop trying to get him back?"

The ronin bowed deeply. "I apologize for my candor, but you will get used to it, given time. Soon enough, you will realize that I'm superior to the original in every way. I may be a shadow, but in the right circumstances a shadow can grow larger than the light that spawns it."

Ino whistled. "Wow. You're kind of an arrogant asshole, aren't you?"

Sakura whirled around to stare a hole into Ino's head as the ronin's eyes sharpened. The fingers of his left hand clenched onto the varnished wood of his scabbard. "There are some that believe that the credit for all that I am should go to the original. Perhaps the blame should lie at his feet as well."

"Nah," Ino shook her head. "Naruto's kind of a blowhard, but he really only says that stuff because he really hopes that one day it'll be true. You're different. You're more like…" She paused in thought then clicked her fingers, "Like that Hyuuga kid Naruto beat up at the Chuunin Exams."

The ronin glared at her. "I don't believe it matters. I am the clear victor. The king's champion can no longer protect his vacant throne and the seat needs to be filled. These matters do not concern you. Do not interfere."

Ino grinned like an amused feline. "It's weird. You're the same person now, but I think I'm going to enjoy watching him kick your ass again."

The ronin frowned confusedly. "What do you—" Without prompt, his eyes widened and he spun around, staring at Watchman's corpse…

The wound had been lethal. It ran from beneath his right pectoral to just under his left ear and had spewed blood with a flow that left no doubt about Watchman's chances for survival.

And now, only minutes later, the only evidence of that wound was a line of angry red skin.

Watchman slowly climbed to his feet and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, smearing crimson all the way down to his chin. He was liberally painted in his own blood, from his hair to his toenails, and the way he bared his teeth made him look something like a cannibal, an animal.

His boxers, the last remaining stitch of clothing on him, were utterly ruined, stained beyond repair. From his clenched fist hung the severed cord of his necklace, and the precious stone sparkled gently in the sunlight.

"You'll pay for that," he announced. The look in his eyes was murder.

Her heart almost stopped. 'That killing intent…' It was almost like being back in Wave Country, surrounded by blinding fog with an assassin on the prowl.

She shivered. That look didn't belong on Naruto's face.

The ronin looked perturbed. "I cut through your spine," he murmured.

Sakara felt a phantom ache coming from her neck and gently rubbed the tensed muscle as Watchman's hand traced the path his wound. "You did," he nodded. "I think I'll return the favour."

Ino looked like she had her hands full just enduring the tension, so she gulped down a lump of reluctance and took a half step forward. "Um… Watchman?" He stilled at the sound of her voice. "Are you okay?"

He turned to look at her with eyes like a startled doe and her fear of him just dissolved. It was incredible how those eyes brightened up his face. He was still all bloody, but when he looked at her like that it wasn't scary at all. It was just disgusting.

"Sakura-chan? Ino?" He sounded confused.

He blinked several times and used the inside of his wrists to vigorously rub his eye sockets. He looked up and stared.

It was like he didn't recognize them. "Watchman, are you okay?" she repeated.

He threw a quick glance at the ronin. "Okay? Yeah, I'm fine, b-but what are you two doing here? Am I dreaming?"

"No way," she breathed. "Did you forget?"

He grimaced and cradled his forehead in his palm. "I think… maybe I did? I'm pretty sure I just died again."

Ino sighed and crossed her arms. "Watchman?"

Watchman tilted his head. "What?"

She stared at him intensely. "Don't make me a liar."

His mouth opened to speak but his words were cut off by a spray of blood erupting from his chest.

Ino hid her face behind her palm and shook her head. "That moron…"

Sakura clenched her fists as the ronin kicked Watchman's body off of sword. The corpse hit the ground like a sack of potatoes. "Ino, we have to do something!"

She scoffed. "Like what?" She pointed at the ronin. "You think we can stop that sword? Without even a kunai?"

The ronin stepped around the body until he faced its neck and raised his bloody sword above his head, staring down with steeled features. His fingers clenched around the hilt.

"Stop!" she screamed. The word ripped out of her throat and seemed to freeze the ronin in his tracks. She screamed with such effort that it left her slightly out of breath.

The ronin looked at her with narrow eyes. A closed face. Like Sasuke's.

She was sweating. Her palms were moist and her fingers felt like icicles, but she couldn't just stand there and watch that boy die again! He wasn't Naruto, but he wasn't trying to be. He wasn't her teammate, but he was a comrade! How could she abandon him?

"Don't do it," she told him.

The ronin looked down at the prone blond. "Why shouldn't I? He stands between me and all my dreams."

The question sounded honest, so she thought about it.

'I don't want you to.' That was essentially what it boiled down to. She had nothing else.

She stared him down until he turned to meet her eyes. "If you kill him again, I'll never forgive you."

He closed his eyes. "You're exaggerating," he judged.

His eyes snapped open.

"Don't!" she yelled. She found herself reaching out for them, but it was much too late.

The sword swung down.

It made a sound like a church bell as it struck a dome of green light.

The ronin lowered his center of gravity and struggled against the push of the growing expanse. His feet tore up the grass as he tried to dig his feet in, only to be steadily pushed away from Watchman's prone form.

"W-what is this?" the ronin strained to say.

Something inside the dome whined sharply like a steam whistle, only with a higher pitch. The light itself intensified from the glow of a candle to blinding sunlight.

She covered her eyes and squinted, but could only make out a silhouette getting smaller and smaller.

A hand grabbed her elbow and pulled her back. Ino's voice could only barely be heard behind the noise. "Sakura! We have to go!"

They didn't make it very far before the phenomenon reached its climax. The light turned white and sound was suppressed to the point where she couldn't hear the sound of her own breath.

A white void.

Ino's grip slackened and slipped away before she could think to hold on.

Her thoughts did the same.


	7. Duel

Big thanks to everyone who reviewed. Sorry if I haven't responded to everyone, but I'm still getting used to the office life. I figured you'd appreciate it more if I spent more time writing instead.

This one is a bit shorter than the last chapter, but I think I can live with shorter chapters if it turns out that the release schedule isn't completely ridiculous. Two months isn't bad, right?

Also, I just realized that I really enjoy writing Naruto in the first person. I might have to do it more. I think it turned out alright, but I might also be completely insane. Tell me what you think.

* * *

What was I doing? I can't remember.

The sky is really blue. I don't think I've ever seen this much blue anywhere else, except maybe in the ocean. Saa… I haven't seen the ocean in such a long time. How long has it been?

I blink. Wait, have I ever seen the ocean?

I think about it, but no answer comes to me. It doesn't really scare me, and I kind of get the feeling that it should. Maybe I forgot something else that's important? Or, or maybe someone's making me forget?

I stop thinking and float on my feelings for a while. Nope. I'm not afraid at all. I can't get worked up about it.

I decide to stop trying to scare myself. It's pointless. If I know one thing, it's that I don't know a lot of things. What's one more?

I cross my arms. I guess that's a maybe then? Yeah, that feels right. If someone asks me if I've seen the ocean, I'll say 'maybe'.

No. No, that's stupid.

Well, I guess I should go see it just to make sure.

I move to get up, but stop when I notice the nasty stuff coating my skin.

My hands are all sticky. I wonder whose blood this is. Blech… the smell makes me want to puke. I'm gonna have to take a swim in the ocean when I find it.

Oh! My necklace! Hey! Who cut the cord? And why am I naked?

I look around. There's an open field laid out in front of me with a mirage in clear view.

I stare at it. Then I stare at it some more.

I blink, and it doesn't go away.

I dig in the ground for a small pebble and throw it. It bounces off of her head.

I think… I think she might be real! Wait! Wait! She's not moving! Is she hurt? Did I hurt her? I mean, I called it a pebble but it was actually pretty big… b-but that's not my fault! I thought I was seeing things! Don't hate me!

I scramble towards her and reach her side quickly. I reach for her shoulder, but I notice the blood coating it and freeze.

I don't want to touch her with bloodstained hands. I vigorously try to wipe them off into the grass, but it's nowhere near enough. In fact, I think they've only gotten messier, with green pulp and bits of grass sticking to my skin.

I slump, and give up. I stare at her prone form, feeling as helpless as she obviously was.

"Sakura-chan," I murmur worriedly.

What was she doing here? Didn't she know how dangerous it was? How could she–

I frown. Hey… What is she wearing?

I look down at my naked and bloodstained legs and torso, then back at the black T-shirt and orange pants hugging her body.

A chill passes down my spine.

I slap myself and shake my head wildly. Maybe I'll actually knock that stupid thought out of my head. Sakura-chan… Sakura-chan wouldn't kill me just to steal my clothes. I'm pretty sure of that. She doesn't even like orange.

Still, what happened?

I sit up straight. Wait, wait wait! Sakura-chan probably wouldn't kill me, but that doesn't mean someone else didn't!

I remember something and it makes me feel a bit frustrated, so I dig my fingers into my scalp and scream a wordless shout. I don't feel any better, so I do it again, with words this time.

"Damn it all to hell! Why is that never the first thing I remember?"

I hear someone cough. It kind of freaks me out.

"Who's there?" I scramble to my feet as fast as I can and spin to face the source. At the same time. It doesn't work very well.

Sometimes I don't feel comfortable in my own skin. Sometimes it feels too slow or too stiff or something. It's like I always feel like I can move faster than I actually can. Iruka-sensei says its puberty, but I dunno.

Maybe it's just that I think too fast?

I dunno.

"How long are you going to lie there? Nice face plant, by the way," an annoying voice talks down to me. I recognize it instantly.

I grimace when Ino's skinny legs walk into my line of sight and spin to face me. "Ugh… It's you Ino."

Great.

I start to look up and blink when my eyes reach her waist. Orange? I sharply crane my neck up and stare.

She's wearing my jacket. Yamanaka Ino is wearing my jacket.

I leap to my feet and throw my arm out, pointing at my favorite piece of clothing. "Oi! What are you doing with my jacket, thief! Give it b—" The rest comes out as unintelligible mumbles.

She has her palm over my mouth and she's gripping onto my cheeks pretty tightly.

She interrupted me! Me! I feel a surge of indignant fury build up inside.

Her mouth is flapping about but I'm sure as hell not listening. Instead, I look her deep in the eyes and I crack my mouth open. I wait for just the right moment, right when she's taking a deep breath, and I lick her palm. I taste it, really slobber all over it.

Ino's thirteen, and sometimes she looks at me like I'm gunk stuck to her high-priced sandals. Her hand's gone before I can even blink, but it comes back even faster.

_Smack!_

The slap hurts, but that look on her face makes it all better.

"Pig," she snarls.

I smirk nastily and rub my cheek. I don't have to say anything more.

Ino huffs and crosses her arms. "I don't know why I bother," she mutters angrily. "You'll just get killed again."

I stop. Eh?

I tilt my head to the side. "You know who killed me? Wait! He's still here?" I'm surprised. That never happens. Usually by this point they've already gotten lost in the catacombs.

Ino glares at me. "You haven't listened to a word I said, haven't you?"

I'd give her a proper answer, but I'm only barely listening to her as it is. I'm too busy looking out towards the horizon, searching for anything that catches the eye.

I find him. A few hundred feet away, and he's only just getting up.

I grin. Finally, some good news.

I should tell Ino to take Sakura-chan out of the way. It's about to get messy. I turn to face her, but I stop before I say anything.

I frown. "Hey, what happened to you?"

She's hurt. I can see some cuts and bruises on her skin. There are dirt and grass stains all over my jacket and on her thighs, knees and even in her hair. She looks like she got into a tussle. I wonder who she went up against. I'd say Sakura-chan, but she doesn't have a scratch on her.

Ino rolls her eyes. "You only just now noticed? I can see why you got the lowest score in attention to detail."

I ignore that and nod in the swordsman's direction. "Did he do that?"

She snorts. "No, you did."

My eyes widen and I turn to stare at her. "Wha— When? How?"

"With that stupid green shield thing," she answers. She sees the confusion on my face and shrugs. "I don't know what it is. It showed up when that guy was about to finish you off and basically exploded, only not really."

"What the hell does that mean?" I ask.

"It pushed us all away from you and kind of scrambled my thoughts," she said, wincing at the memory. "That really hurt, by the way."

I'm still confused. "Wait. How come Sakura-chan's not injured?"

Ino passes her hand through her hair and grimaces at the feel. I know her well enough to know that she desperately wants to take a bath. "Forehead doesn't have any mental training. The only reason she's on this mission is because of your pathetic crush. She blacked out in like a second and I had to cover for her landing."

My eyes trail over her injuries. "I thought you hated Sakura-chan?"

Ino crosses her arms and looks down.

Ino's eyes are so pale. They're blue like mine 'cept they look washed out, like she's not all there or something. Her hair's the same, blond but not as bright as mine. I thought she was creepy for the longest time when I was a kid. I think I thought she was a ghost.

It's been years since I thought of her as a ghost, but that didn't stop her from being as cold as one. But when I look at her now, I just see soft eyes and fond feelings.

"Of course I don't hate her," she says. "Just because we're rivals doesn't mean she's my enemy or something. We were friends for years before she started chasing Sasuke and we had to go to war. I don't want to see her hurt unless I'm the one doing it."

My mind freezes. "You're not serious," I say, almost desperately. "You guys stopped being friends because of Sasuke?"

She looks at me oddly. "Yeah. You didn't know?"

There are so many things I want to say, but in the end I just sigh. "You really are a Sasuke-idiot."

She tries to hit me, but I lean out of the way and start walking towards the swordsman. "Look after Sakura-chan, will ya? I gotta take care of this guy."

"Hey. Hey!" She tries to get my attention, but I don't slow down. "Aren't you going to take your staff? Hey!"

I don't say anything. I'm too focused on the guy standing in the middle of my garden, holding his sword at his side like he's a sword saint or something.

He's pretty far away, but I can still see crimson on his blade. It pisses me off. "Bastard," I snarl. He'll pay for that.

"Watchman!"

I stop. I dunno why, but something in the way she just called for me makes my legs stop. I answer without looking back, "What?"

"Don't die again! I'm getting tired of watching it!"

I grin and turn back. "You worried?"

She doesn't look it, and she makes sure I know why. "As if! You're rude, conceited, and you don't listen to a word I say even when you keep getting yourself hurt! I've seen enough of your insides to last me a lifetime! I'm not worried, I'm disgusted!"

Her cheeks are red with anger and my ears are kind of hurting. Ino's pretty loud when she yells. Not as loud as Sakura-chan, but still. I think I can see why they were friends.

I scratch some blood off of my chest and grin.

"Oi, Ino, how long do you think I've been doing this?"

This is my job. My life's work. My purpose.

She starts to say something when her eyes snap to look behind me. She screams out, "Look out," in warning.

It comes too late.

I can already feel it. My body tenses and I start to move. I'm not sure why, but I don't fight it. I trust in my instincts. My body springs back and I feel the urge to catch something behind me. I don't have eyes on the back of my head, so for an instant I'm just floating in midair, reaching back into nothing.

I've got time to think, so I notice how wide open Ino's pale eyes are, especially her pupils. I think she might be worried after all.

I'd smile, but it would take too long.

Something tough hits my palm and my fingers clamp down around it instinctively. My fingertips instantly recognize the texture and pattern of the cloth.

I'm holding onto the end of a sword hilt.

I'm confused.

_He looks like a samurai but don't forget who birthed him. He moves like any shinobi. He'll try to keep his limbs close to the body, so he'll have to sheath that sword. The attack will come suddenly, from behind and aim high._

Oh! I get it!

I hear him grunt and I realize that he's trying to pull his sword out of my grip. It's not working very well. He's trying to twist and jerk and everything, but I'm not budging. He's just not strong enough to make me.

I frown. The smart thing to do would be to break his sword. For a swordsman like him, it's pretty much the same thing as taking off his arm. It wouldn't take much effort either.

A shinobi would do it without hesitation. But…

This asshole killed me _twice_ in front of Sakura-chan! And Ino! I can't let that go so easily. Iruka-sensei would tell me that I'm being stupid, but I can't help it! I've got my pride!

I turn back to look at my killer. He stops pulling at his sword long enough to glare at me with cold eyes.

I sneer. What does he think he's doing with Naruto's face? Bastard looks like Sasuke.

I look away from him and turn back to face Ino. The ronin does this stupid growl of frustrated anger and tries again to pry my grip loose. Was that supposed to intimidate me? What a poser.

I ignore him and search out Ino's eyes. She's watching the ronin's struggles but meets my eyes after I stare at her for a few seconds.

"Ino, I don't need your advice," I tell her.

Her expression shifts just enough for me to see that she thinks that I'm an idiot.

I relax the grip my fingers have on the sword's hilt and it slips out instantly. I hear the sound of the ronin scrambling for footing as he loses his balance, then the distinct sound of a sword leaving its sheath.

"Words just distract me!" I say, grinning. "I learn with my body!"

Her pale eyes are wide open and her lips move to form words.

Too slow, Ino!

I'm already moving!

* * *

There wasn't time to talk. There was barely any time to think.

She couldn't even form the first syllable of her warning. With a flash of light, it was over.

He was just so _fast_.

Her mind brought up the image to the fastest ninja she'd ever seen prior to seeing this ronin in action: the genin Rock Lee and his Reverse Lotus technique. When she thought of that fight all she remembered, besides the gruesome conclusion, was seeing blurs of motion as Gaara of the Sand floated in midair like a ragdoll from the force of his blows.

Ino bit her lip. He knelt before her, with his arms extended like an eagle and the back edge of his sword gleaming in the sunlight. His eyes were closed, and his mussed hair fluttered under the wind's caress.

If Lee moved like an arrow in mid-flight, then the ronin's strike was like lightning. The only movement she could catch with certainty was the flash of his sword swing.

The ronin's technique was awe-inspiring. It was also terrifying.

One strike, one kill.

That thought brought a smile to her face. She looked up behind the ronin, where Watchman stood with his hands on his hips, unharmed, and thought he might stand a chance.

The ronin's eyes cracked open. "I missed," he noted softly.

"You didn't _miss_," Watchman corrected loudly. "I dodged."

The ronin frowned as he climbed to his feet. "Impossible. You aren't fast enough."

Watchman shrugged and reached to scratch his nose. "You sure about that? It's not like you have a sharingan."

The ronin lowered his head, mulling over that statement. Watchman watched him for a moment and scoffed. "You know what your problem is?"

"Enlighten me," the ronin said distractedly.

"You're too much like Sasuke. That's why you're going to lose," he predicted with casual confidence. But then, this wasn't the first time he'd said something to that effect, and he had twice ended up with steel lodged in some part of his tender insides. Ino wasn't much impressed and the ronin seemed even less so.

"Is that so?" he asked. He seemed amused, in the same way an adult is amused when a child says that he'll grow up to become emperor of Mars. His smirk widened and the grip his fingers held over his sword's hilt tightened. He twisted his wrist sharply, and the wide side of the blade caught more sunlight, focusing it into a blinding beam aimed directly into Watchman's eyes.

Watchman flinched.

His body hit the ground like a half full sack of rice and rolled to a stop. The sound of ragged breathing gave testimony to his agonizing pain. He rolled over and climbed to his hands and knees, trembling as he tried to master himself.

Watchman lowered his extended fist and sighed. "It's sad," he said.

The ronin wasn't in any condition to speak, so Ino guessed that Watchman wasn't talking to him. "What is?"

Watchman looked on as the ronin clumsily scrambled to his feet. "This guy isn't anything like me."

She shook her head. "Why is that sad?"

His sadness clung to the edges of his expression. "He _is_ me, Ino. He just doesn't want to be."

"I… beg to differ," the ronin stressed. His shoulders slumped under the weight of his exhaustion and his heaving chest told her that he was far from having recuperated. His left hand cradled his chest gingerly, and the other trembled as it held his sword before him.

But none of that stopped him from raising his sword. None of that prevented him from launching his attack. He screamed a warrior's cry, and charged.

The ronin was like a naked blade, except that instead of cutting flesh and bone, he cut distance. His edge was blunted now, and it showed when he tried to spring his attack. His stiff features twisted and shifted until they sculpted a tribute to his suffering, and instead of disappearing into a perfectly coordinated attack, he merely blurred and stumbled to a stop halfway there. A choking gasp was torn from his throat as he struggled to keep his knees from collapsing.

A surge of anticipation rushed through her. This was it, she thought, the fight was over! Watchman couldn't possibly let this opportunity pass him—

He missed! By a mile!

Her face fell.

His fist had passed through emptiness and encountered the expected resistance. Only it wasn't so expected by Watchman, because he overextended. His fist was so far out from his center of gravity that it almost looked like he'd tripped, and if he had made contact with the ronin's face then it probably would've cracked open like an egg. But he didn't, and instead his blow missed by something like six feet and he had to scramble to avoid falling over.

It only took him two steps to drain his momentum, but that was enough to put his life in jeopardy.

The ronin had fallen to one knee and looked up when Watchman shadowed him. Their eyes met and both took a moment to reassess their respective positions.

The wind blew by and picked up her loose hair for a ride. Though shorter than they had been a few months ago, they were more than long enough to blind her. She reached up and brushed them out of the way, only to freeze.

"You've got to be kidding me," she groaned.

Nothing. No one. Nothing but a wide expanse of grass and plant life. No one besides a few congregations of flowers flourishing in the distance. They'd just disappeared.

It was ridiculous. There wasn't anywhere for them to go!

A minute passed in silence.

She sighed. "Maybe we should just leave," she muttered. "What do you think, Sakura?"

Grass rustled behind her. "When did you find out?"

Ino rolled her eyes. Did she really have to ask? "When that rock hit that massive billboard you call a forehead? You passed out, but you weren't _dead_. Jeez!"

Sakura walked up to her, staring intently at the damage caused by the battle. "Shut up."

Ino smirked. "Looked like it hurt too."

"It did," she grumbled, and absently rubbed at the spot.

Ino watched her friend stare at the ground a minute longer and couldn't help but ask, "What are you staring at?"

"I think I can see their footsteps," Sakura mumbled.

Ino snorted. "You think you can see their footsteps? In broad daylight? Your skills amaze me, Sakura."

Sakura threw an irritated glare her way. "I mean new ones."

Ino started. Sakura waited for a rebuttal, and went back to her vigil when none came. Normally, the smug smile on her lips would've sent Ino into a tizzy, but she disregarded it just this once in favor of watching dirt.

She eyed the patches of torn up grass with great intent, but nothing jumped to her attention. She turned her head to the right and focused her attention on every patch of dirt in front of her, and found nothing. She turned to the left only to have nothing jump out at her.

She started to turn to Sakura with an insult on her tongue, but stopped when her eyes caught sight of something odd.

"There!" she pointed at a particular footprint… at the same time as Sakura.

She snapped her head to look at her rival, and only just barely managed to swallow the words: 'I saw it first!'

Sakura choked something down and smiled shallowly. "Yes! There."

Ino smiled back, and hoped that they would find Naruto quickly. This wasn't getting any easier.

She turned back to the footprint she was still pointing at and took the time to observe it more carefully. The mark was formed by a sandal and seemed remarkably shallow for its size, but that wasn't what was most interesting about it.

That award went to the fact that it hadn't been there the first time she looked, a few seconds ago.

"So they're still here?" she asked.

Sakura nodded, and Ino suddenly lost a lot of enthusiasm about her plan to make their escape.

Annoyed, she asked, "So why we can't hear them? Is it part of the jutsu?"

"It's likely," Sakura agreed. She crossed her arms and looked skyward. "It's a pretty amazing technique."

"Terrifying is more like it," Ino groused. "I'm surprised Naruto came up with it. Or one of his clones or whatever."

"I'm not," Sakura said, smiling. "Dummy never thinks things through."

Ino squinted and stared. "What?"

Sakura sighed in a practiced way, over exaggerated and snide. "Keep up, Ino-pig. Watchman's been dropping hints left and right and you still don't get it?"

Her fists suddenly itched, and Sakura's soft features seemed greatly soothing. But she held back, realizing that the taunt was more force of habit than deliberate intent. Sakura was usually prepared to defend herself after insulting her like that, but she wasn't even facing her now as she was too focused on the invisible scene combat.

Still, she hissed a warning out from between grit teeth. "Don't make me kick your ass, Sakura."

Her friend's shoulders slumped. "Fine. They're the same person, right?" Sakura asked.

"Yeah, and?" Ino spat out.

Sakura rolled her shoulders at the hostility. "In case you didn't notice, the ronin was moving too fast for Watchman to react."

"So? We couldn't react eith—" she paused, frowning. "Wait."

"You got it," Sakura agreed. "Once the ronin starts his attack, he can't stop, because he can't react to his own movements."

"He's going too fast?" Ino snorted. That was just vintage Naruto. The boy never knew when to stop. "So… so Watchman doesn't have to go faster than the ronin, he just has to move first?"

"That's what I figured."

Ino chuckled and shook her head. "So what's this then?" she asked, waving at the empty field before them.

Sakura didn't answer. She didn't press her.

Countless blades of grass wavered slowly as the wind brushed against them, driving the rhythm to a ritualistic dance. She focused on field, catching brief glimpses of disharmony, where grass fluttered against their brethren.

"This…" Sakura trailed off into silence, gently worrying at her lower lip. "This might be why Naruto made Watchman the guardian in the first place."

The question on her tongue slipped out when an image appeared in the corner of her eye: The shape of a man, blood red and blonde tumbling on the ground, chased by a wraith wielding a shining blade.

Her head snapped back to face the field, but too late. It was empty.

Her pulse raced. "Did you see that?" she called.

"Yeah," Sakura answered, and the level of apprehension in that one word made her sound like she was dangling off the edge of a cliff.

Ino swiveled around to observe as much of the garden as possible, hoping to catch another glimpse of their battle. "Are they slowing down?" she asked.

"No, I think it's more that they're losing focus— There, again!" Sakura yelled, pointed off to her side.

Ino turned too late too see them, but a conspicuous trail of blood splatter remained to mark their passage.

Grimacing, she her bottom lip. "Watchman's in trouble!"

She tried to think of something they could do to help, anything that could tip the fight in Watchman's favor. But how could they help if they couldn't even see their movements? They were outmatched. Completely outmatched. The only thing they could do now that would help in any way was just to stay out of the way.

"We're in the way?" Those words carried faint surprise, like reaching an unexpected conclusion.

Ino blinked. She looked at Sakura but her friend was busy staring at something behind them, her jade eyes narrowed into twin pikes and her mouth forming silent words.

She opened her mouth to ask what she was talking about but her words morphed into a startled yelp when Sakura took hold of her wrist and dragged her into a sprint.

"Sakura!" she yelled.

Her pink hair whipped about her face as she turned back, screaming: "We're in the way! Come on, we have to move away from his staff!"

His staff? His _staff_?

Her mind overflowed with curses and insults, so much so that they spilled out of her mouth, unintelligibly but with unmistakable tone. That moron! He _never_ listened!

She twisted back to glare at the golden staff, almost losing her balance with the force of the motion. It sat there, half buried in the ground about twenty feet away.

Thirty feet, now. Forty.

_Clang!_

A sword struck a foe it could not cut, and cried out in anguish. The high-pitched whine pierced her ears like needles.

It happened in an instant. Watchman must have been a fifty feet away when she noticed him, but he reached his staff before she could blink, falling into a controlled slide as neared his weapon. His abrupt deceleration kicked up plumes of dust and dirt that hung in the air, obscuring their view of the battle.

Sakura brought them to a stop, letting go of her forearm as she approached the edge of the cloud, intently staring into its depths.

Ino bit her bottom lip as she listened to the grunts of exertion emerging from the slowly thinning dust cloud. She couldn't really tell who was struggling more, since they both had the same voice, but experience was a harsh teacher and its lessons told her what to expect. She didn't think Watchman had had enough time to get to his feet before the ronin attacked. He might have his weapon, but that staff was _heavy_! She couldn't really imagine him fending off the ronin's attacks without leverage.

Something deep in her stomach clenched and sank. She really didn't want to watch him die again.

The wind blew by and thinned the dust cloud enough for her to distinguish shapes.

Watchman was certainly at a disadvantage. He was lying flat on his back and had to contend with the ronin's entire body strength as the boy tried to push his sword's blade down to the Watchman's throat.

And yet, the ronin was the only one visibly struggling. While the ronin's face revealed his effort and desperation, Watchman's was like a deep lake on a cool winter night.

"How? How are you doing this?" the ronin screamed as he tried to murder his twin.

The lake surface cracked. Watchman clenched his teeth in frustration and glared. "How can you _still_ not understand?"

"What is there to understand? This is madness!" the ronin spat out. "I've spent years developing this technique! Decades! How can you know it? How can you outrun me?"

He shoved down against Watchman's defense, leaning completely over the boy, but whatever fractions of an inch he gained were immediately lost as Watchman exerted his incredible strength.

"And what makes you think that I can't do what you do? Huh?" Watchman asked, affronted. "We're the same person! And of course I can outrun you. I'm stronger than you!" As if to prove it, he flicked his grip on his staff and redirected his force, tripping the ronin and sending him rolling onto battered grass.

Watchman and the ronin scrambled to their feet simultaneously. The ronin held his sword in a tight grip as Watchman brandished his staff with a flourish, showing off his deadly skill. He settled into a low stance, with his staff aimed between the ronin's eyes.

"How many fights have you been in? How many times have you struggled to win? I'm older than you. I'm more experienced. I've got sharper reflexes. Are you really so blind that you can't see that?" Watchman asked earnestly.

The ronin kept his silence, but his hatred was plain to see.

Ino felt a chill. That wasn't really an expression Naruto's face should be able to make. In the past, Naruto's anger had always felt playful, harmless. This was something else.

No, she thought, narrowing her eyes. This was _someone_ else.

She didn't know Naruto very well, but she thought that she could understand Sakura a little bit better now.

Watchman just shook his head, like he was disappointed. "That's it then."

Again, the ronin made the first move, but his opening hand held different faces. He discarded his ace, abandoned his blitzkrieg dash and rushed Watchman with prudence guiding his step.

Her eyes narrowed as the ronin carefully trotted closer to their guide.

"What is he thinking?" she muttered.

That dashing technique was the lynchpin to his attack. It didn't seem to work against Watchman anymore, but abandoning it certainly wasn't the solution! No matter its flaws, that one technique represented decades of work if his words were to be believed! How could he just throw it away?

A ninja lives and dies by his technique! In a sense, it _defines _him. By throwing away the technique he created, the ronin was throwing _himself_ away. It was like letting go of all he believed in, just dumping it all in the trash! His entire philosophy of life, abandoned, just like that!

It was worse than desperate. It was hopeless.

Sakura shook her head. "He's lost confidence in his technique."

Ino's features twisted into a grimace.

'How disgusting!'

Watchman tilted his staff to intercept the ronin's swing. The ronin's sword cried out as it was denied once and again, until the sound of clashing metal resembled nothing but high-pitched sobs.

The ronin brought his hands down to his waist, and swung at an upwards angle. The only thing she caught out of the sword swing was a flash of light— _Clang!_

He held his sword above his head like an executioner, and brought it down like a guillotine— _Clang!_

He brought the hilt of his sword to his shoulder, parallel to the ground. He took a quick step forward and thrust his blade out like a spear, aiming lower than she'd expected— _Clang!_

His attacks were fierce and relentless. Every attack was swift and deadly— _Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang!_

Watchman was unruffled. His cool stare never left his opponent's as his dexterous hands sharply angled his staff to intercept the ronin's strikes. Though the attacks were continuous and the avenues of attack varied wildly, he managed to spare enough attention to spit out a few words.

"Last chance, Samurai! Leave, and don't come back," he yelled over the sound of clashing metal.

She couldn't see all the strikes but by the sound of it, in the time it took him to deliver his warning, Watchman was forced to block eleven times.

Even distracted, he didn't allow that sword to come within an inch of drawing blood.

The ronin had to know his chances of victory were slim, but he didn't hesitate. He swung with abandon, caring not a whit for defense, and bared his teeth like a wounded wolf. "I thought I told you," he hissed out of grit teeth. "I have no lord—"

His defiant declaration segued into a pained grunt when Watchman redirected his last attack out of harm's way, then slammed the lower extremity of his staff into the inside of the ronin's extended knee with a meaty _thwack_!

The ronin started to fall. He swung his sword desperately, hoping to cut off Watchman's advance.

His third swing passed close enough to Watchman's head that it lopped off a few strands of hair, but their guide made it through essentially unharmed. Before the ronin could do anything, he pressed his staff lengthwise against the ronin's chest and shoved.

The ronin flew back fifty feet and rolled to a painful stop after another fifteen, his sword still in hand. He started to scramble to his feet, then stopped and looked up.

He saw Watchman hanging forty feet in the air, prepared to throw his staff like a javelin. The ronin tried to roll to the side, but his injured leg convulsed and collapsed as he put weight on it, leaving him right where he started.

The staff left Watchman's hand. It pierced the sky like a golden arrow of light.

There was no time left.

The ronin timed it carefully, and swung his sword.

The sword hit the staff.

The blade shattered.


	8. Funeral

Hey! Check it out! I was inspired! Thanks for all the support, everyone!

P.S. If I haven't answered your question, it's because I plan on covering that later on in the story. So just sit back and enjoy.

* * *

Watchman landed softly, bending his knees to absorb the shock of impact. He held his pose for a long moment, his head bowed as he listened to the echoing wails.

The ronin writhed like a worm on a hook as his trembling hands hovered over the golden staff sticking out of his chest. Fresh blood coated the intricate etchings and dulled the weapon's brilliance.

A wretched, wet cough abruptly tore its way out of his throat with alarming violence, cutting off his wails and leaving his lips tinged red.

He quieted down after that, as though he finally realized that his struggles were only hastening his trip towards the inevitable conclusion. So he dragged his feet, and let himself be dragged there, one raspy breath at a time.

An uneasy quiet settled down around them, broken only by the ronin's wheezing. Seeing this, Watchman climbed to his feet and quietly began his trek to his downed opponent's side.

They watched him go, and shared a look.

"Let's follow him," Sakura suggested, grimacing slightly even as the words left her mouth. She had no desire to see anyone's last moments, but at this point they needed to focus on getting as much information as possible.

Ino's expression closed off. "Sakura…" she began and stopped in the same breath.

Sakura already knew that she wasn't going to like what came next.

Ino's pale blue eyes trailed Watchman's back for a few of his strides, and her expression solidified. "Maybe we should think of going back? This could be our last chance."

Sakura sighed. This again? "Ino, I'm going to find Naruto. With or without you."

Ino had clearly expected that answer, but that didn't stop her from looking at sky and releasing a high-pitched grunt colored with long-suffering frustration. "Why are you being so stubborn? The mission's over Sakura!"

Sakura couldn't hide the slight smile that curved her lips as she picked up the opportunity to correct her oldest friend. "It isn't, actually. We haven't delivered the information yet."

Ino's glare did nothing to dim her smile. "Then why? Why are you so set on doing this, even when you _know_ that we're jeopardizing the mission with every moment that we spend here? This place is enemy territory, Sakura!" she yelled.

Sakura noticed Watchman turn to face them, but paid him no more attention as Ino counted out their faults.

"We've got no equipment and we don't have the skills we'd need to handle a naked infiltration! We're just genin! We aren't qualified to do this, and trying to do it anyway will probably end up getting us both killed!"

Sakura's smile slowly grew into a grin. Ino was making perfect sense.

But it didn't matter. She knew what she had to do.

Ino seemed offended by her negligence. "This isn't funny, Sakura! Are you even taking this seriously? We have bodies here, remember? I don't know what'll happen if we—"

She stopped listening. She brushed her short hair behind her ear and recalled the events that led to her haircut.

"Ino, did I ever tell you the story of my squad's genin test?"

Ino paused in mid-tirade and eyed her oddly. She shook her head confusedly. "What does that have to do with—"

"It sounded simple, at first," Sakura interrupted. "Two bells, three genin. If you had a bell, you were a genin. If you didn't… you weren't. Simple. Sensei attached the bells to his belt and told us to give it our all. Sasuke and I went into the woods to hide, and Naruto followed the most direct path possible to the prize: a straight line."

Ino snorted despite herself.

Sakura smiled softly. "It didn't work out. For any of us, really. Sensei spent the next few hours showing us how inadequate we were and when it was over he brought us to the hero memorial and tied Naruto to a log for performing the worst out of us three. None of us had managed to get a bell. Our failure was monumental, and Sensei took great pleasure in educating us on our failings."

"Get on with it…" Ino muttered.

Sakura cracked a wry grin, but didn't bother to respond. "He told us that we had failed to put into practice one of the most fundamental elements of the ninja arts: A ninja must put aside personal interests for the sake of the mission."

Ino wasn't about to let that one pass. She leapt up, yelling, "Then why—"

Sakura gestured for her to stop. "He told us that it would be better for us to give up on being ninja entirely, but that if we were brave enough he'd give us another shot after lunch, only this time he wasn't going to hold back. Now, Sensei had told us the day before that if we ate anything we'd puke it up during the test, so none of us had eaten breakfast."

Sakura shook her head. "We were all pretty hungry, but Naruto was still tied to the post. To make things worse, Sensei forbade us from giving him any food. He specifically told us that the person who fed him would fail the test instantly. Then, he left alone to wallow in our despair."

Ino frowned. "Your teacher's kind of a jerk, Sakura."

Sakura smiled and didn't deny that. "Five minutes after he started watching us eat, Naruto's stomach made this wail of agony and despair. He tried to play it off, but it was obvious he was starving. So, Sasuke-kun offered him some food."

Ino raised an eyebrow. "You just said—"

Sakura continued. "Me and Naruto freaked out, but Sasuke-kun was pretty sure that Sensei wasn't anywhere near us and Naruto was going to be completely useless if he didn't eat anything. So we gave him some food, and the second after he swallows, Sensei pops out of nowhere spewing fire and brimstone."

Ino winced.

Sakura looked Ino in the eye. "You know what he told us?"

Ino shook her head.

"He said congratulations! You passed."

Ino's mouth cracked open. "What? Why?"

She smiled. It was a lesson she would never forget.

"He said, a ninja who abandons his mission is trash—"

"But a ninja who abandons his comrades is worse than trash." Watchman's voice echoed hers as she completed Kakashi's edict.

She turned to look at him and found him staring blankly in their direction, with an odd expression on his face. Conflict raged on his features, but settled down as soon as he noticed her attention. He nodded thoughtfully, then turned back and left for the ronin's side.

Ino's sigh brought her attention back. The blonde gently rubbed the bridge of her nose and tried another tack. "I'm not asking you to abandon him, Sakura! But maybe you should think about what's best for Naruto?"

She shook her head. "This is the best choice, Ino. We can't go back and get reinforcements, there's no time! And judging by the ronin's sword I'd say we can get equipment onsite."

Ino tried to say something else, but she was done talking about this. "I'm not going back, Ino, not until I find him, but if you want to go then I won't stop you. Hokage-sama should know what's going on."

Ino snorted and shook her head, then walked off towards the injured ronin. "That's the stupidest thing you've said all day."

She huffed. "You could've just said no."

The ronin lied motionless at Watchman's feet, breathing as best he could with a gold staff lodged in his chest. His eyes were opened wide and twitched everywhere, with his pupils gaping like a gate blown off of its hinges.

Watchman sighed as he knelt facing his mutilated opponent. "Sorry. I missed."

The swordsman's lips twitched. "Doesn't feel like it," he rasped.

Watchman grinned. "I was aiming for your heart, wanted to give you a quick death."

"Heh," the ronin laughed. "A little while ago I wouldn't have appreciated the effort."

Watchman watched him with a curious eye for a long moment. "I'm surprised," he said, finally. "Not going to curse me out with your last breath?"

The ronin shook his head. "I gave it my all, and lost. Let me die with dignity."

Their guide leaned his chin on his palm. "Well, aren't you cool?"

"Go to hell," the ronin said, tiredly.

Watchman snorted. "You first."

An innocuous detail captured her attention as Watchman shuffled about, settling down into a more comfortable position.

The ronin's extremities had stopped trembling.

Watchman leaned over his twin's face. "You can't see me, can you?"

The scruffy ronin wrinkled his face. "My nose still functions. I'll thank you to keep your distance."

Her eyebrows started to twitch as Watchman obliged, with a childish pout on his lips. "Aren't you going to ask him anything important?"

He turned to her, surprised. "Eh?"

She sighed. She could never really follow Naruto's train of thought. As far as she could tell, efficiency just wasn't a priority to him. As it turned out, his copies weren't much different. "What's this then, if not an interrogation?"

He blinked at the question then looked away. He shrugged. "I dunno. I thought I could keep him company, you know? I don't think he should die alone."

She didn't know what to say to that.

Ino took a step into his personal space, snatching his attention fully onto her. "So he's not coming back to life?" she questioned.

Watchman frowned. "No, of course not. Why would you think that?"

They stared at him.

"Oh," he exclaimed. "No, that's something completely different! Naruto tethered me here so I could defend the catacombs."

"Tethered?" Sakura asked.

"It's… complicated," he said, wincing. "Just know that I'm pretty much immortal within a few miles of this mountain. Outside of that range, I'm just like everyone else."

Ino looked at the fallen ronin with a new eye. "So, what's going to happen to him?"

Watchman shrugged weakly. "I dunno. I never remember what happens after I die."

"No, I meant—" Ino grimaced. "Never mind."

They stayed in awkward silence, overlooking a dying man. She still had questions she wanted to ask, but a grave mood took hold of her and stilled her tongue. Suddenly, when she looked at him she didn't see an enemy anymore. He wasn't a comrade or anything like that, but he was an adversary no longer.

Now, he was just a man wearing her teammate's face, lying on his deathbed.

The quiet continued until the ronin turned his head in their direction. "You had… questions?" He was forced to take a shallow breath between every few words, slowing down the cadence of his sentences.

He was offering to give her exactly what she needed, but strangely that only made her hesitate more. She turned to look at Ino and the girl gestured for her to go ahead, but that wasn't enough to erase her misgivings.

"Are you sure?" she asked.

The ronin turned back to stare at the sky with oblivious eyes. "I'd like to… hear your voice more. I don't mind… paying for it."

She nodded, and quickly took scale of his appearance. He was pale and moved very slightly. He didn't have much time.

So many questions… so little time.

The first was simple. "Why?"

He turned and stared at her with unfocused eyes. "Wouldn't you? I was born… loving my village. I was born… loving Iruka-sensei. I was born… loving you, Sakura. I wanted… to meet you… all of you, finally. That's all."

She felt a strange heat rising up her chest. He said that with such ease that it was embarrassing. She turned to look at Ino and saw the girl grinning at her. She spun back immediately.

She cleared her throat. "Um… I saw a lot of clones running around outside, and I don't think they could have made it past Watchman. Why didn't you take that way out?"

"I can answer that one," Watchman spoke up. "Basically, when Naruto makes a clone, it's a perfect copy, but it doesn't stay that way long. The more time that passes after its birth, the more imperfect it becomes. When Naruto's in here, he leaves a hole out there, and if we focus _really_ hard then we can slip out of that hole and into the outside world as shadow clones. Except that Naruto's a circle and we're more like square blocks."

Sakura frowned at the imagery. "What?"

Watchman gestured half aborted shapes and grimaced. "You know…"

Ino nodded. "I think I get it. You're saying that a clone that's similar to Naruto can trick his body into using kage bunshin to make itself a new body when he isn't in control of it."

Watchman thought about it for a moment, then nodded. "Yep, that it!" He nodded towards the ronin. "Most of the old ones are so different from Naruto that the only way they'll be able to make his body do anything is if they beat him and take over."

"You said that before. What's an old one?" Ino asked.

"On the night where Naruto learned kage bunshin, he made one thousand of us. I was the first," he said, then pointed to the ronin. "He and his brothers were the other nine hundred and ninety-nine, the old ones. Something… weird happened between the time where he made me and the time where he made them, and they came out kind of weird themselves. If you see someone very different from Naruto, chances are he's an old one."

Sakura blinked. "Something weird? Like what?"

Oddly enough, both Watchman and the declining ronin winced at the question.

Watchman bowed his head in apology. "Sorry Sakura. That's kind of personal."

She blinked again, harder. That had never happened before.

"Okay, stop!" Ino shouted, startling her. "Say that again? How many clones did you say Naruto made in one night?"

Sakura swiped at her elbow. "Oi, what's with you?"

Ino eyed her warily as she rubbed the bruise. "Why are you not surprised?" Her eyes widened. "Wait, those numbers you quoted earlier, ten thousand, one hundred thousand, you weren't exaggerating?"

She tilted her head. "No?"

Ino swirled around to face Watchman. "Hey, how many of you are there in here?"

Watchman frowned at the question. "I dunno! It's not like I ever counted!"

The blonde waved those concerns off. "Just give me a ballpark figure."

He thought about it for a minute. "Um… maybe fifty thousand?"

Ino buried her head in her hands and groaned. "How are we supposed to find the real Naruto when there are fifty thousand Naruto look-alikes to sift through?" She peeked out from the cracks between her fingers. "Sakura…" she called out in a pleading voice.

Sakura was adamant. "I'm not leaving, Ino!"

Before they could get into another argument, the ronin interrupted them. "Find… the Hokage."

Ino pointed at the pale man triumphantly. "See! Even he thinks we should go back!"

Watchman quickly shook his head. "No, that's not what he meant. He's talking about… Well, that's where I was planning on sending you anyway."

Sakura frowned at the wording. "Send? You're not coming with us?"

He smiled weakly. "I can't go too far from the mountain. Sorry."

"Are you sure? I mean, I'm sure Naruto will understand if you just—"

"Sakura, I think he means that he can't physically leave," Ino explained, eying the boy with narrowed eyes.

Her eyes widened when Watchman nodded. "Yeah. I start to pass out if I go too far."

"Is it a side-effect of the tether?" she asked.

He pensively scratched the back of his neck. "I dunno. Could be. I'm not supposed to leave anyway, so I never really asked—"

He stopped abruptly and snapped around to stare the boy lying at his feet.

She'd almost asked him what the problem was when she noticed.

The ronin wasn't moving. The ronin wasn't breathing.

Watchman sighed and moved to close the corpse's eyelids, but stopped short when he saw the state of his hand, still filthy with blood and dirt. He started wiping his hands off on the grass in front of him, but she stopped him with a gesture.

Instead, she knelt at his side and did it for him.

She shivered. The ronin's skin was cold.

"Are you going to need help taking care of the body?" Ino asked gently.

He shook his head lethargically. "There's no need for that. Just give it a minute."

Sakura shared a long look with Ino, but neither of them had anything to say. So they waited.

It was a minute before she realized that the ronin was glowing.

A soft white light emerged from every inch of skin exposed to her eyes. It was white like moonlight, and quickly grew in intensity with a sound like a teakettle.

"What's happening?" Ino yelled.

The light intensified to the point where it was nearly blinding, until the whistling stopped, spreading out with a whoosh like having a hundred arrows pass by overhead.

She blinked the spots out of her eyes and looked in the direction the sound was heading towards. She gasped softly.

Dozens of tiny orbs of light plunged into an empty patch of grass just up ahead. It looked like an army of white fireflies diving into a green lake.

"Beautiful," she whispered.

She thought to look down and saw that the ronin's corpse had disappeared, leaving nothing but his clothes behind. Her eyes widened.

She quickly looked back at the empty patch of grass, where the last orb of light slowly dropped into the green sea. A nervous feeling pushed through her veins, fuelling her motions. She felt cold, and swallowed uneasily.

They slowly pushed through the ground supported by thick necks, their heads shriveled up and restrained. They grew quickly, reaching past the grass' topmost perimeter in seconds, but stopped as soon as they reached a certain height. Finally, the head located in the very middle of the group trembled minutely and… bloomed.

It relaxed and stretched out, becoming a fragile spot of color gently swaying under the influence of something much bigger than itself. A blue flower standing alone within a field of closed blossoms, as if it were the vanguard for its people.

And like they were following its lead, the other flowers also shivered and blossomed, each one adding another spot of color to the world.

"What just happened here?" Ino asked softly.

Watchman gently poked one of the flowers and watched it sway and dance. He climbed to his feet with a sigh.

"He reincarnated."

Obviously satisfied with that concise explanation, he turned away and walked towards the ronin's abandoned belongings.

Sakura rubbed at her arms as she turned left and right, staring at the scores of flowers floating atop the green sea. Suddenly, this place no longer seemed quite as beautiful.

* * *

They trucked onwards under cover of night, following Watchman's lead without pause with only the quiet sounds of their footsteps to keep them company.

Her hands were beginning to cramp, but she couldn't bear to loosen her fists. It was just so very unnerving. The most beautiful field of flowers she'd ever seen was nothing more than a giant graveyard.

It felt like the temperature dropped something like five degrees. The feeling was uncomfortable, but it had still been bearable.

Then the sun set and she witnessed the moon rise up in its place to reign over an _empty_ sky.

The bright moonlight illuminated enough of their surroundings that the late hour posed very little obstacle as they trekked around the mountain, but it certainly didn't help with the alien atmosphere that suffocated this place and made it difficult to draw breath.

She looked up and stared at the lonely moon, wondering again why there weren't any stars to keep it company.

"Why'd you say that you didn't know what was going to happen to him?"

She startled and almost squeaked at the noise. Her head snapped around towards the source, pointing her eyes directly at Ino.

The blonde had quickly taken off Watchman's jacket, but she didn't give it back to him. Instead, she chose to tie it around her waist, leaving her clothed in a wrinkled white shirt and knee-length blue shorts.

That question was the first attempt at communication any of them had made over the past several hours and Sakura hadn't been ready for it.

In contrast, Ino's steady gait showed no sign apprehension or concern with her surroundings, and her light blue eyes were pinned on their guide.

Watchman turned back and matched her stare, blinking. "Because I didn't," he answered. He turned back and added, "I still don't."

The boy had taken the time to wash up and to lock up the gate before they left, so he no longer looked like the title character of a slasher movie. He wasn't naked anymore either, seeing as the ronin kindly declined to take his clothes with him to his next life.

Now, he walked around in grey hakama pants, with a long strip of black cloth wrapped around his neck like a scarf. He carried the pieces of the ronin's shattered sword in a sheath, and the cord of his beautiful necklace was tied around his wrist.

She caught a flash of his bare feet from within the wide pant legs of his hakama and glanced down at her feet. She was very, very glad that he had chosen to give her ronin's sandals.

Ino crossed her arms. "What do you mean you don't know? Didn't you say he reincarnated?" she accused.

Watchman nodded in agreement. "I did, and he did, but that's just his body. Those that bear Naruto's likeness don't get to _keep_ his likeness after they pass away. So our bodies break down and we reincarnate, but I don't know what happens to everything else. Naruto might know, but I never asked."

Ino tilted her head, curious. "Why not? You never thought about it?"

He shook his head no. "I don't like to think about it. I guess I was just scared."

Ino hummed and lowered her head thoughtfully, after obliviously stomping all over the very issues Sakura had been trying to avoid.

She didn't really want to dwell on this subject, but now that the ice had been broken, her curiosity got the best of her. "Do they all turn into flowers?" she asked, quietly and half-hoping he wouldn't hear her.

He looked at her from the corner of his eye. "Not really. We all turn into flowers and small trees here because…" he floundered for an answer for a few moments. "Just because," he said, finally.

"Really?" Ino asked, wryly. "That's your excuse?"

Watchman avoided her eyes. "…It's complicated," he mumbled, before raising his voice and continuing on unopposed, "Anyway, that's just when you're close to the mountain. Further out, the wheel of reincarnation isn't fixed. Animals, insects, whatever! Anything is fair game!"

"Grass too?" Ino asked, staring at the miles of grass surrounding them.

Watchman nodded. "Grass too."

Sakura stopped on a dime, grimacing as she stared at her feet. Feet that had trampled grass over the past several miles. An unpleasant feeling swelled in her breast, a discomfort she didn't know how to ease.

Ino didn't take long to notice. "Hey, what are you doing?"

She couldn't really say. She didn't know herself.

She bit her lip and forced herself to keep walking, ignoring the discomfort.

"Sakura?"

She faked a smile as she passed her friend's worried eyes. "It's nothing Ino. Forget it," she assured. She kept her eyes on Ino's for several strides, trying to convince her friend with her eyes.

It didn't seem to be working. She looked ahead to see their guide's piercing stare mere feet away.

She stopped abruptly and jerked back in surprise, taking a half-step away from his bright blue eyes.

Watchman seized the initiative. "You shouldn't do that, Sakura-chan."

"What—" she stopped and shook her head. She really didn't want to talk about it. "Look, I'm fine! Let's just keep going," she suggested.

There was no time like the present, so she immediately tried to walk around him, but he spread his arms wide, blocking her path and forcing her to stop.

Her patience was quickly coming to an end. She glared at him and raised her voice, "Oi! What are you doing? Didn't you say you'd help us find Naruto? Let's stop wasting time already!"

He spoke softly. "Sakura-chan. I can't let you go if I don't know that you're ready to do the right thing."

Ino groaned. Sakura felt her pain. Another impromptu obstacle.

Watchman paused, giving her the chance to respond, but she didn't have anything to say to him. She just glared, hoping to intimidate him into stepping out of the way.

Ino did, however, have something to say. "What's the problem, anyway?"

Watchman looked at Ino briefly, but made sure to make eye-contact with her when he spoke. "Sakura-chan is thinking too much."

Ino snorted. "I could've told you that. Still, I don't see how that's a problem."

Watchman's eyes seemed to glow underneath the moonlight as he met her eyes. "Imagine. At some point, everything living thing in this world, from the grass to the birds flying up in the sky, was once part of a living, breathing, thinking being."

Ino looked like she wanted to argue for a second, but she swallowed her concerns and tentatively nodded. "Yeah…"

Though Ino held up the other end of the conversation, Watchman's eyes never deviated from her. "You're uncomfortable, Sakura-chan. It's obvious. You've been uncomfortable since you saw what happened to the ronin, and you stopped walking when you realized where the grass came from. You're thinking too much. Deep inside you, it's not just grass anymore, and that's a problem."

Sakura thinned her lips as Ino shook her head in confusion. "So? This isn't exactly happy-happy fun time for me either, you know! She'll get over it!"

He shook his head wildly. "Will you? I can't just hope you will, not on this! I have to know! If you're uncomfortable just stepping on grass, then what are you going to do when the others stand in your way?"

She finally found her tongue. "I know what my mission is, Watchman!"

"And this isn't it, Sakura-chan! I'm not stupid," he yelled, frustrated. "Baa-chan wouldn't send you two in here without backup if she knew what it was like! And she doesn't know what it's like, but she has a better idea than you two, so she wouldn't have sent you do to anything but reconnaissance!"

His fierce eyes slipped away for a moment as he took a deep, calming breath. She had thought that their intensity would have diminished somewhat from his brief meditation, but she was wrong.

When they opened up again, they were blazing. Focused and determined like she had never seen them.

"You don't want to abandon Naruto, and that's fine. I respect that. But I _have_ to know that you'll do what you have to!"

"And what is that?" Ino asked.

He looked at them both in turn. "Have no pity. If one of us gets in your way, then kill him. If they're shacked in a house, then _burn_ the house down. If they're hiding behind a wall, then bring the _wall_ down. Have _no_ pity. Show _no_ mercy. Tolerate _no_ obstacles."

Ino snorted. "So what should we do about you, Mr. Obstacle? Should we kill you?"

The mocking grin on Ino's face faded when Watchman paused to think that suggestion over.

It didn't take him long. Just a few seconds of thought and he was all smiles as his hands gently unsheathed the broken sword.

He tossed the sword towards them, hilt first.

Sakura caught it out of simple reflex and gripped it with moist palms. What was left of the blade was only about two feet long, but the blade was just as sharp as it had been and the shattered tip looked like it could easily tear through muscle.

It was more than enough to kill.

She looked up into his fierce eyes and shivered on contact with his resolve.

"Show me that you've got what it takes," he requested.

She couldn't think. She could hear her blood rushing past her ears, but it felt like she had lead floating in her blood stream. Her hands were weighted down and drooped as she stood completely frozen, captivated by the look in his eyes.

He didn't wait long for her to make up her mind. In a moment's notice he was there, holding her by the shoulders and yelling at her.

"Don't hesitate! We're just smoke and shadows, Sakura! Just reflections on a lake surface. You think we have worth, but it's just an illusion. In here, only Naruto matters! Only He has real substance," he yelled, shaking her slightly. "If you can't kill me, even when you know that I'll come back, then I won't be able to let you pass!"

She closed her eyes, but when she opened them again he was still there, still glaring at her.

"Last chance, Sakura. Kill me!"

Go forwards, or go back?

She couldn't think.

So her hands moved by themselves.

She didn't hear the strike. His eyes disappeared underneath his pained grimace and his hands tightened their grip over her shoulders. A second later, she felt warmth leaking profusely onto her hands.

Her eyes slowly widened. What had she done?

His eyes cracked open, and he offered her a grin twisted by agonizing pain. "Hey, good job!" he congratulated her then winced, "Except… I kinda thought… you'd go for something more… instantly lethal."

He abruptly began to cough violently. Her trembling fingers let the hilt slip through her grip as Watchman tilted back and let gravity take over.

He hit the ground like a brick.

"Oh jeez!" Ino hurried to him, pale-faced and trembling. "This is so messed up."

Sakura stared at her bloodstained hands, feeling like she was a thousand yards away, like she wasn't the one who had just shoved two feet of steel inside Watchman's chest.

She stayed that for a long minute, staring at the blood dripping off her trembling hands, listening to the sound of Watchman's wheezing.

Drip. Drip. Drip…

It was different, so, so very different.

"Do you understand now?" Watchman asked, speaking softly.

The question pierced through the haze like blazing sunlight. She nodded firmly.

"Good," he said with a sigh, probably relieved that he wouldn't have to demonstrate his point again. His breathing had evened out, she noted, enough for him to speak without much effort. Ino had pulled the blade out and was putting pressure on the wound, but she didn't think it was all that necessary. He would probably survive on his own.

She looked at her opened palms and watched the blood slowly drip down.

She did understand. It was simple.

They didn't matter.

It wasn't going to be easy. When she hit them, the clones wouldn't explode like smoke-filled balloons anymore. They would bleed. They would scream. Some of them might plead or beg for mercy. It was going to be ugly, and her hands were going to get dirty, because in here, they were on the same level.

But at the end of it all, it was all just an illusion. Smoke and mirrors, each and every one of them.

The clones were just reflections. Some of them were identical, others were distorted, but they all had something in common.

They could be beautiful and innocent. They could be valiant and heroic.

They could be friends. They could be enemies.

None of that mattered. Compared to Naruto, they weren't anything but dreams.

She clenched her fists, staining her hands with Watchman's blood.

"I won't forget," she whispered. "Thank you."

It was a simple lesson, but a hard one.

Watchman met her eyes as he shrugged off Ino's helping hands. The message in his eyes was clear as day.

_Don't get attached._

As long as she found Naruto, this world and everyone in it could burn.

* * *

"Well, this is it."

Watchman stopped before a stone structure set on top of a small hill. It was a raised pentagon made of white stone, with a smooth pillar on each corner supporting a raised halo.

Carved on the surface of the stone was what seemed to be scripture, but she couldn't recognize the symbols.

"What language is that?" she asked.

Watchman shrugged nonchalantly. "I don't know. Ask Naruto. He's the one who made it."

Ino started. "Naruto made this? How? I know I don't know him very well, but I'm pretty sure he's not a damn sculptor."

Watchman opened his mouth, but quickly closed it and shook his head. "You'll figure it out. Come on, we've wasted enough time. I don't want you to get there too late to see him." He gestured for them to enter the pedestal. "Get on."

Ino turned to look at her, but she was already climbing onto the stone pedestal. The girl huffed in irritation, but quickly followed.

As the blonde made her way to join her at the center of the pedestal, she watched Watchman close his eyes and bring his hands together, his fingers twisted into practiced configurations.

Bird.

Dragon.

Serpent.

Hare.

And on he went. Carefully, intently forming symbols with his hands.

Twenty-three hand seals in, he stopped.

The unknown scripture carved all over the pedestal glowed with bright light. The light quickly died down to a dim glow which was followed by a deep sound, like rocks shifting underground. A grating sound drew her attention upwards, where the top two-thirds of the ring was beginning to rotate clockwise, shedding dust as it slowly gained speed.

Just beyond the pedestal's perimeter was their guide. He stood watching, brightened by the light emanating from the pedestal; his blue eyes most of all.

He watched quietly as the ring spun ever faster, until a whine appeared at low edge of her hearing.

"Aren't you going to give us any directions?" Ino asked worriedly.

He grinned impishly, like he was having a little fun at her expense. "Heh! You'll know where to go. I guarantee it!"

The sound grew quickly in intensity and the light seemed to accompany it. Soon, her senses would be completely overwhelmed by them, but it was strangely painless, even now. There was no urge cover her ears or to close her eyes even as the sensations grew ever higher in intensity.

There wasn't much time left. She didn't know if he'd be able to hear her, but there was something she had to say.

So she put her hands around her mouth so as to make a funnel, and yelled out without restraint, "Watchman! Thanks for all your help!"

At first he seemed surprised, blinking excessively with a blank face. For a moment there, she thought he hadn't heard her and prepared to try again.

Her hands fell to her side.

There was a smile on his face, and it wasn't an expression she recognized.

Naruto's smiles were excessive. He put so much effort into them that his eyes usually closed and cheeks pulled back all the way to expose all of his teeth.

This one… It was soft, content. A small arc of the lips and a softening of the eyes.

Naruto was never content.

A smiling boy illuminated from the bottom up by a white light, his blue eyes glowing like jewels, his black whisker marks remaining visible even as everything else was overwhelmed.

That was the last she saw of him.

An unknown amount of time passed before she found herself being shaken awake. She groaned, recognizing the feel of Ino's hands.

"Why do you always wake up first?" she asked, mumbling.

"Sakura! Get up! You've got to see this!"

The urgency in Ino's voice and the low volume at which she chose to speak sharpened her mind like an electroshock.

Her eyes snapped open and immediately judged the time by the position of the moon. Not much time had passed since they left Watchman, assuming of course that they hadn't been unconscious for more than a day.

She climbed onto her knees and noticed that she was still on top of the pedestal, and that Ino, who was kneeling beside her, looked excited rather than apprehensive.

"I don't care what you say," Ino whispered. "Naruto is a freak of nature. This isn't normal, Sakura!"

She frowned. Despite her words, Ino sounded almost impressed. "What are you talking about?"

Rather than answer, Ino pulled at her arm and led her off the pedestal. She noticed that the pedestal wasn't on top of a grassy hill, but on top of a mountain, and that Ino was leading her to the edge…

She stopped and gaped.

Her head snapped up. There were still no stars in the sky. They were still in Naruto's head.

She shook her head, unable to believe what she was seeing.

It was home.

Their entire village spread out before them, from their vantage point on top of the Hokage Monument.


End file.
